


A Star Within the Mere

by isavedlatin



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
Genre: Alternate Universe - Jane Eyre Fusion, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Bodice Ripping TBD?, Brienne is a Baller Governess Who Takes No Shit, F/M, Jaime is Hot Rochester, Slow Build, Taking Some Liberties With Casting In Order to Fit The Jane Eyre Universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-13
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-08 08:35:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 37,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8837770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isavedlatin/pseuds/isavedlatin
Summary: Victorian gothic romance Jane Eyre-fusion AU in which Brienne comes to Casterly as a governess - you know the deal. But where Jane would be a stoic, Brienne is a boss. 
Arson, attempted murder, mystery, mayhem, a mad woman in the attic, and lots and lots of slow-buildy eventual smut. (This will be earned smut, people! Earned through sweat, tears and character study!) Posting every few weeks.





	1. Sunset

When she had reached the top she paused, and turned, and saw the Rock across the field below her; that grim, grey hall with its many twists and turrets, its stern medieval aspect, suddenly coroneted with gold, silhouetted in the final hour of evening. 

The air was thin, sharp, and cold, and she breathed it eagerly, expelling it in white streams. All day she had felt the somber shadows of the house settling in her limbs, stiffening, ossifying, and she had wanted to feel loose, to feel her full range of motion, to force the stillness out of herself with rushing blood. As soon as she was out of sight of the hall she began to run, running for at least the past quarter mile, running until her chest was tight and her throat flayed with the winter’s chill. But this view of the land, revealed when she emerged above the treeline, had arrested her. She had not seen the hall from this distance since she arrived there months ago.

She faced the sun as it retreated into the sea far beyond, spilling gloriously overland, forcing her to shield her eyes, and casting inky shadows. The top of the low stone wall at which she stood was illuminated, and the descending hillside beyond it, while the rumpled leaves underfoot and their sparse dusting of snow were shaded in blue; her cloak, her cheeks, the fine strands that had escaped her bonnet and now waved about her face; each of these burned richly yellow, as if in firelight.

The Rock did not seem so forbidding now, not so close and malcontent. It was a lonely edifice overlooking a harsh sea, and had weathered many centuries. Little wonder that it should be severe or guarded. But edged in evening gold, it revealed its simple glory, its noble form. Brienne stood by until the sun slipped at last away.

Then over the quiet hillside, there rang out new footfall on the frozen ground, thunderous and fast. She looked over her shoulder to the newly gathered darkness down the wooded path, and heard something racing toward her through the gloam. For a moment she thought of the tales Roelle had told her as a child, of spirits and creatures that haunt woods and solitary lanes, of the ‘Gytrash’ that takes the form of a horse or dog or beast and seeks out travelers in lonely places. In an instant the shape of a dark horse and rider materialized in the trees and hurtled past her, breaking her brief fancy, and she released the breath she did not know she had suppressed. 

But a resounding thud and clattering, and a violent cry just beyond her made her turn round again, to where horse and rider had capsized, evidently felled by a patch of black ice in the darkening road. She hurried toward them. The force of the rider’s efforts to extricate himself from saddle seemed to demonstrate that he was unharmed, but she could not be sure.

‘Are you injured sir?’ She called as she approached.

Both only continued to struggle. Fiercely under his breath the rider uttered unnameable oaths, but did not make an answer.  
‘Can I do anything?’ She tried again.

‘Only stand aside!’ He cried as he at last freed himself. The horse righted herself, and the figure regained his feet, but bent now to his leg and ankle, as if to try their integrity. He hobbled over to a stile at the wall and leaned upon it.

‘If you are hurt and want help, I can fetch someone from Casterly Rock or near Millcote.’ she now stood nearly by his side.

‘Thank you, no. I shall do, I have no broken bones. Carry on your way.’ He tried to stand, but with a strangled growl at once resumed his place. In irritation he turned and for the first time looked up at the figure before him.

‘By the Seven,’ he cursed heartily as he beheld her. Indeed, a tall man and only half reclining as he was, she towered over him. She composed herself with a small smile in the face of this familiar reception.

‘I cannot stand aside nor carry on sir, ‘til I am assured that you are without injury,’ she stepped over to pick up his hat from the ground and proffered it to him. ‘The hour is late, and this path untraveled. I could not think of leaving you here.’ She insisted briskly, arm outstretched.

‘The hour is late,’ he repeated as he took the hat from her hand and reviewed her considerable height, ‘and yet you must have no fear of walking these untraveled ways, have you? Tell me, where do you come from?’

‘From just below. And no, indeed I have no fear of walking these ways by moonlight. I will run over to town with pleasure if you wish it.’

‘From just below, you mean that house on the rock there?' And he pointed across the fields to Casterly, now veiled in blue twilight.

‘Just so.’

‘And whose house is it?’

‘Why, it is the seat of Colonel Lannister. Do you not know it?’

He raised his brows and his thin mouth curled into a little smile. He appointed the hat atop his head once more.

‘I might ask if you know Colonel Lannister,’ he replied.

‘No sir, I have never seen him.’

‘And can you tell me then how you come to be in residence at his house.’

‘I am the governess.’

‘The governess! Seven take me, I had forgotten, the governess. An unusual figure to be a governess…’ he mused, and surveyed her again.

‘Allow me to fetch your horse, at least.’ She turned and marched toward the spirited steed, which only tossed its head again and again and would not let her get hold of its bridle. The gentleman chuckled softly and with her back to him she frowned in indignation.

‘I see that I must be brought to the mountain, rather than the mountain to me,’ he sighed, ‘You have no stick, no umbrella I might lean upon I see? Well. Circumstance compels me to make use of you. I must beg of you to come here.’

She approached without hesitation, and leaned down. He placed a heavy hand on her shoulder, which she boldly took and laid about her own neck, and put her arm beneath his, the better to support him as he stood. He looked at her in surprise, yet said nothing, and she paid his quizzical look no attention. She helped him limp to the horse. He seized the bridle, clenched his fine jaw, lifted his good leg to the stirrup and swung himself ably into the saddle, betraying a pained grimace only once he was astride. She handed him his whip, which had buried itself among the leaves by the wall.

‘Thank you. And now, make haste to your home, little sprite. There are devils on the hills at night.’ He grinned, and touched his horse and cantered away down the path from which she had come.

She made her way back slowly, savoring the frost in the air. Though it was but a little incident, as she descending the hill and crossed the dusky field to Casterly, she found she derived no small satisfaction from the encounter. Her help had been required, and claimed, and what was more, she had proven herself uniquely suited to the need. Her stature, her strength were unusual distinctions for a woman, and yet with such distinctions she could make herself useful, even respected.

She passed under the gate, and traversed the courtyard now bathed coolly in new moonlight, toward the glowing windows of the hall. Tonight the bone-deep stagnation, the oppression of dullness and sameness she often felt within the confines of Casterly was pushed out of mind by the prospect of warmth suffusing her cold fingers and toes, and by the memory of her late adventure. 

She was tapping the snow from her boots at the side door when Mrs. Frey descended upon her.  
‘Where have you been, child?’

‘Only out as far as the-’

‘Oh never mind that my dear,’ the old woman hastened her out of her coverings, ‘get you upstairs and change.’ She had never seen the lady so discomposed, nor so exhilarated.

‘Mrs. Frey, change for whom?’

‘The Master’s come, didn’t you see? And in a dreadful ill-humor; his horse slipped in the lane coming down the hill, and he’s been with the surgeon this past hour. He would be glad if you and your pupil would take tea in the drawing room with him, at six o’clock. Now, best change your frock.’

Brienne’s stomach dropped as she thought again of the singular smile worn by the stranger on the hill as he asked her to repeat in whose employ she lived.

‘Me? My frock? Is it necessary to change?’ She managed.

‘Yes my dear. I always dress for the evening when Colonel Lannister is at home.’


	2. Colonel Lannister

Within a quarter of an hour, she was dressed in her black silk frock, the only other suitable for the occasion, and had made her modest toilette. She was preceded by Mrs. Frey into the drawing room.

She knew him at once by his tall forehead and wide, sweeping jaw, his narrow eyes. With the hearth’s light on his features, she saw more fully what the prevaricating purple twilight had concealed; not merely handsome, he was resplendently beautiful, and perhaps more so than any person she had before met. His features were finely cut, his cheeks high-set, his nose long. There was a twist of menace at the mouth that soured the appearance somewhat, yet it kept the whole from seeming dully pretty or saintly. The hair that framed the visage was of deepest gold, and it gleamed in the firelight. In figure he was no less pleasing, no less what he ought to be; tall and lean and broad-shouldered.

At the nearby table, with slippers and wrists dangling off the sides of her chair, like a little slumped doll whom someone had forgotten to prop up, sat her ward; the child’s comely face was discomposed in an expression of deepest ennui. 

Brienne had a moment to be amused by the sight of this sullen demi-god reclining, chin in hand, with one foot propped on a foolishly overstuffed and tasseled cushion, obliged to share his taffeta Olympus with a sulky little girl; the two united only in their beauty, their lassitude, and their utter dissatisfaction with each other’s company.

When this small creature caught sight of her preferred companion, she sat upright, with a keen ferocity silently willing Mademoiselle over to her, that she might be liberated from this dreariest of salons. 

‘Here is Miss Tarth!’ sang out her conductress.

‘Let Miss Tarth be seated,’ said he, by his tone seeming to say that it were the least concern of his whether Miss Tarth should be here or no.

And this at last put her at her ease. She had no facility with graciousness or niceness of manner, she came unequipped with pretty phrasing, and if he had welcomed her convivially, this and the effect of his looks would have rendered her quite at a loss for sufficient response. As it was, his churlishness was a relief; it imposed no burden of elegant rejoinder on her, and she was content to be seated and ignored. It was better far than to be stared at. 

Myrcella was a innately guarded child, who thought it well enough to be silent in the presence of this dour, masculine addition to her cozy sphere. She was contented to have her governess at last in her clutches, and she clapped soundlessly and seized Brienne’s wrist, pulling her to down to sit at her side, nodding and miming the tea service.

Mrs. Frey instead took it upon herself to supply the conversation for the evening, and began to talk at a steady pace, occasionally making small inquiries of the master, to which he attempted to make no reply, and she scarcely paused to hear one, except for once when she was rejoined with ‘Madam, I should like some tea.’

She passed the saucer to Brienne, and instructed her to pass it to the Colonel, as Myrcella might spill it. (Myrcella for her part sniffed as though this were a gross underestimation of her abilities.)

She handed it to him. As he took it from her, he fixed her with a narrow look and said, ‘Were you awaiting your people on that hilltop?’

‘My people, sir?’

‘Your people; the green men, fairies, grumkins and snarks, and all those wicked folk who love a moonlit night and with whom a giantess might have congress. Did I break some sacred ring of yours that you spread that damned ice in my path?’

‘My people have all gone sir,’ she replied evenly, matching the seriousness of his tone, ‘the fair folk will not trouble these lands more; they find it inhospitable.’

‘Come to the fire,’ he demanded, and Brienne settled in the chair opposite her interlocutor. 

Myrcella made as though to follow, but was commanded to remain near Mrs. Frey.

‘You have been resident in my house these three months?’

‘I have sir.’

‘And you come from –?’

‘From Lowood School, a charitable institution, near Pinkmaiden.’

He seemed startled for a moment. ‘I know of it. How long were you there?’

‘Nine years.’

‘Nine years in a charity school! It is a wonder you are of such strong constitution, Miss Tarth, I would rather have thought a place like that would have done anyone in.’ His eyes flashed and he smirked unsettlingly. ‘But of course, you are no mere mortal. You have the look and stature of quite another world about you. When you came upon me this night, I had half a mind to demand whether you had bewitched my horse; I am still not sure. What of your parents?’

‘I have none.’

‘Nor ever had, I imagine. No, you rose from the earth a titan, quite complete.’

Brienne only gazed tranquilly ahead, attending his next question. His derision was far from the worst she had endured. So long as she betrayed no feeling, he would soon tire of his sport. He continued:  
‘Who was it that recommended you here?’

‘I placed an advertisement, which Mrs. Frey answered.’

Mrs. Frey now eagerly caught the sleeve of the conversation from where she sat knitting. ‘And I cannot tell you, sir, how grateful I am to have Miss Tarth about the house. Myrcella is quite another child in her company, she has such an energetic and careful teacher-’

‘Yes, yes, you needn’t trouble yourself to illustrate her character Madam, I shall make up my own mind on that point. Let us not forget that she began by felling my horse. Pretty words in her favor will not dissuade me. How old were you when you came to your school?’

Mrs. Frey settled back into silence, apparently unsurprised at having her feathers ruffled.

‘I was fifteen when I came to Lowood School.’

‘And spent nine years there, which makes you four and twenty.’

‘Indeed sir.’

‘Have you seen much society?’

‘None but at Lowood, and here at Casterly.’

‘Did you have friends at your school? I can imagine not. Were you a foot taller than all the boys? They must have laughed at you, called you names.’

‘Children can be cruel sir, as much as their elders,’ she replied. A slow smile spread across his handsome face, the amused look of a cat when the poor creature caught between its paws makes as if to escape. 

‘And so you lived like a little- well, rather a great, nun, with few friends, fewer prospects, and reading only such polite books as came into your way. Were you treated well at least?’

‘No, sir.’

‘No! How very decided you are. No! But I am a little acquainted with the family. Baratheon, whom I understand to be the director at Lowood, is a parson. A dull man certainly, but not a cruel man.’

‘The elder Mr. Baratheon is indeed a harsh man, pompous and meddling, who exercised all manner of cruel economies upon the children in his care.’

‘What were these unjust economies?’

‘He starved us, and failed to heat the school adequately in winter. When I first came to Lowood, it was under his sole superintendence, but I am happy to say that thereafter, a committee was appointed to govern which included the younger Mr. Baratheon, his brother. Mr. Renly Baratheon was a man of great kindness and feeling.’

‘Ah yes, the _younger_ Baratheon,’ repeated he, drawing out each word, lazily. ‘Youngest of the three. Handsome devil, if I recall. You certainly seem to speak of him with great feeling.’ 

‘He was kind to me, sir, he was kind to all.’ 

The Colonel fixed her with another look of sly mischief. ‘Did you love him?’ 

‘I beg pardon sir?’ 

‘Gods, you did, didn’t you. Did you ever tell him of your great feelings?’ 

Brienne vainly tried to subdue the heat rising in her cheeks and ears. She returned his insolent gaze with a stern countenance, as near a scowl as she dared. 

‘I held him high in my esteem, for he undertook to improve the quality of life for pupils and teachers at Lowood. It was due to his recommendation that I became a teacher at all-’ 

'You were a young lass when he arrived, I imagine; impressionable, inexperienced. And a girl your size, how you must have longed for a man who could make you feel small, and womanly – ‘  
His lightly mocking tone had become shaded with a strange bitterness. Mrs. Frey and Myrcella were watching them now, alarmed by the change that had come over. 

‘Did he ever guess that you worshipped him? That you wished for him to take you in his arms, your gentle saviour, to take you as his giant wife? Perhaps he wasn’t strong enough to overcome your modesties. I’m strong enough--’ 

She rose abruptly and stood before her chair, hearing her heart pounding in her ears. She fought to keep a steady voice;  
‘Sir, it is nearly nine o’clock, and Myrcella ought to have been in bed long ago. If you will excuse us-‘ 

'I do not excuse you.’ 

‘Sir, I do not think this kind of talk is responsible in front of a child. I beg your leave to put Myrcella to bed, and then if you wish it, I will return that you may continue to insult me at your pleasure.’ 

She drew herself up to her full height, and looked down at him, eyes blazing. He straightened himself in his chair, and from his expression she half expected him to leap forward to wrap his hands around her throat, or at least to eject her from the house on the spot, but inside a moment, some bitter fever that possessed him had broken and he recovered himself. 

‘Go, Miss Tarth,’ he said curtly, ‘I bid goodnight to all of you.’ 

'Goodnight Sir.’ 

She moved over to the stunned little girl and swept her out of her chair, placing her large hands on the frail shoulders and guided her from the room. Mrs. Frey shook herself from an astonished reverie and followed them out, bidding the Colonel goodnight. 

She paused by them in the hallway, and opened her mouth as if to speak. Here again, Brienne expected to hear her service ended, to hear that she would be turned out into the snow at first light. 

But the older woman only looked down at Myrcella, whose green eyes were wide with confusion and uncertainty, and she sighed. To Brienne she said; 

‘You mustn’t think of him too harshly my dear. He has borne a great many trials and tragedies in his time, and they weigh heavily upon him, and show their strain in ways such as these.’ 

When in her bed at last, Brienne could not close her eyes without seeing the dark figure of the Colonel hunched by the fire. That a man with so handsome a face and with so great a fortune, who could go wherever and do whatsoever he chose, that such a man elected instead to sit by his hearth and make sport of the people beneath him – she found herself unable to spare him the harshness of her thoughts.  
‘What I would do, were I beautiful and wealthy, or a man, what wouldn’t I do…’ 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the purposes of the this fic, Myrcella is about 5 or 6.


	3. Septa and Sinner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Revelations; another verbal sparring match by the fireside.

She saw next to nothing of Colonel Lannister for several days afterward. She and Myrcella were forced to relocate their school room from the library, where the master now conducted business during the day. When his leg had recovered sufficiently to permit of exercise, he rode out often in the afternoons, and returned only late at night. 

When he passed her on the stair or in the gallery, as happened once or twice, he acknowledged her with only a haughty, distant nod, as though he were not entirely aware of her existence. His thin, nearly absent courtesy did not upset her; so long as he refrained from further interrogation, she could meet his glacial civility with her own.

What little Brienne had gleaned about her employer from other teachers at Lowood was eventually further illustrated in fragments by Mrs. Frey. His reputation was not an honorable one by anyone’s account; he was spoken of as a hedonist, a villain and a scoundrel who, it was whispered, had broken the oaths of his service by murdering a superior officer. Some had cautioned her against accepting Mrs. Frey’s offer of employment.  
‘Wouldn’t you be frightened?’ they had tittered,’a man without morals, he could compromise you, there’s no telling what he might do.’ Brienne knew too that behind their hands they had continued, snickering, ‘But Brienne the Beauty has nothing to fear from an officer, or any man...’

One afternoon, Myrcella and Brienne were at work in Mrs. Frey’s sitting room, when they were all three startled by the sound of gunfire from the grounds. Myrcella and Brienne crowded to the window and saw Colonel Lannister shooting at fowl from the terrace. His was indeed a fine figure, with his shoulders squared against his musket and his hair shining in the weak winter sun. 

Mrs. Frey sighed, tugging needle and thread through the hoop in her hands. ‘He was always an excellent shot. It was the making of him and of his downfall I suppose,’ she mused from her chair.

‘His downfall? What can you mean?’

‘Oh, I oughtn’t have said a word.’ The old woman glanced at the little girl leaning in the window box. ‘Myrcella, child, be so good as to fetch me the silver scissors from my bedside, there’s a dear.’

The girl went out slowly and silently, looking significantly at Brienne, knowing full well that gossip would be had in her absence.

Mrs. Frey went on; ‘When the Colonel was a young man, only a Lieutenant Colonel, he was with the campaign in Essos. He was much admired then, I can tell you, a handsome officer, one day to be a Major-General and so on,’ her voice dropped to a whisper; ‘but he was found to have shot his commanding officer, General Aerys Targaryen. It was a great disgrace, and though the circumstances were murky, and he was acquitted of wrongdoing, everyone knew that it was only due to the influence of his father. I can assure you, were he not a Lannister, he would be rotting in a prison in King’s Landing. But instead he was given a promotion to Colonel and pushed out the door, as it were. Oh!’ She concluded hastily as they both spied golden curls lingering in the doorway. 

Days cloaked the house and its grounds in grey mists or flurries of snow. The sun seldom showed herself. Casterly echoed at night with the wind off the sea, rattling the panes, making itself heard in the corridors. 

Occasionally Brienne heard, from the floor above her own, strange murmurs and deep, unnatural laughter. Having questioned Mrs. Frey concerning this, she was told that it was only Jeyne Poole, the girl who helped with the sewing and washing. Brienne had encountered Jeyne in the corridors; she was a small thing, with a grey complexion and anxious eyes. She was odd to be sure, though Brienne could scarcely reconcile the timid aproned personage who bowed her head and dropped frequent teetering half-curtsies with the unhinged, almost feral laughter that sounded in the dead of night. She supposed it was merely the effect of Casterly itself; echoing, magnifying, distorting, making the ordinary seem something unfathomable, as even a child’s hand can cast a monstrous and improbable shadow. 

She was much occupied with the society of Mrs. Frey and Myrcella. The three dined together each day, and sat together over a fire each night. It was a calm and assuring circle, in which she was pleased to be accepted, tranquil and free of her past. Yet always beneath the blanketing contentment lingered an inexpressible yearning, curling at the corners of her mind, which would not be quieted or smoothed. She was forced to admit that since the arrival of the Colonel, these edges peeled and curled back yet more insistently.

She did her utmost to divert the restlessness of her spirit into the education of the child in her care. When first acquainted with her pupil, she had been surprised by the austerity and reserve of one so young, who scarcely smiled, nor opened her mouth to speak. Yet after much careful and affectionate attention, though she still spoke very little, the true child had emerged; a willful and exuberant individual, sensitive and clever, who delighted in puzzles, games, flights of fancy. When in the company of others, every drawbridge was sealed up, and Myrcella was her own silent isle, unreachable. Brienne often wondered about the girl’s life before her own arrival, but quickly learned that this subject was assured to seal the small lips, and cast the shadow of an unfathomable sadness in the little green eyes.

One evening, the message came that they were again to join the Colonel in the parlor. Brienne brushed Myrcella’s hair tenderly, and fixed it with a bow. The child still frowned upon the thought of spending another tedious evening watching Mrs. Frey knit while Brienne’s attention was diverted by the Colonel. 

They found him standing by the mantle, a glass of wine in his hand. On the table sat a wide, handsome box covered in blue paper, encircled by a full grey ribbon. He grinned when he saw Myrcella’s eyes grow wide, and flit questioningly between her governess and the box.

‘Yes, that article is in fact for you,’ he addressed her, ‘It is my recompense to you for stealing your companion for the evening.’

Brienne guided the girl forward, saying, ‘What do we say, Myrcella?’  
So softly that it was barely heard, she gently intoned ‘Thank you, Uncle.’

Brienne looked to the Colonel in alarm. He only nodded solemnly to the child, who nodded gravely back, before making her way to a chair and clambering atop it to pull slowly at the sumptuous curl of ribbon.  
‘Yes, yes, go. Disembowel it. I hope you find it to your liking. My only condition is that you do so silently, you understand? Mrs. Frey will entertain your prattle for tonight, I wish to overhear none.’

He was rewarded with a brief, peevish raise of two small eyebrows, as if it were a foolishness too pitiable to be acknowledged that she should lower herself to ‘prattle,’ and he was thereafter ignored.

Brienne still lingered in shock at the title ‘uncle’ applied to the Colonel. She looked to Mrs. Frey, but the woman registered no equivalent surprise, standing now by Myrcella as they lifted the lid from the box and in awe withdrew a series of magnificent dolls, adorned in cunning habiliment. She had never inquired into the precise relation was between her pupil and her employer, and Myrcella herself had never before given any indication of family bond.

She was called from her contemplation by the Colonel, who bade her sit in her former place by the fire.

‘Miss Tarth I have been grieved to think that I have offended you. Well, perhaps not grieved. Bothered, is more like the term.’ Once again his tone was teasing and insincere, and she remained stonily silent.  
‘Come, it were better to be at least on terms of conversation than always enemies, don’t you agree? Casterly is a large and lonely house, and the winter is long and isolating. I have not the patience for the company of simple-minded old ladies, nor children. How else are we to pass the time? We might as well get to know one another.’

She was obliged to restrain a snort of derision. How flattering, she thought, that he should only call us forth when he is bored and no better company is to be had. Small wonder that he so seldom came to Casterly, if all he could expect was the society of unamusing women.

‘You regard me closely, Miss Tarth, do you find me handsome?’ The wicked gleam again inhabited his features, and she realized that she had been indeed studying his face, even as she had dwelt on how little she liked him. She forced herself to give a prim smile. 

‘I think you know very well what you are sir, and do not need me to confirm it.’

‘My looks please you then?’

‘No, sir.’

‘No! She thinks me handsome, but is not pleased by my looks! What confusion is here! She strokes my mane and sticks me with a penknife. I think the lady does not know herself.’

‘I know myself thoroughly sir. I ought to have said that it is not for me to be pleased by your looks, and that they are nothing to me.’

‘Good looks are nothing to you? And what of handsome young Renly Baratheon of Lowood school? Were his good looks significant to you?’ She faltered, the polite smile dropped.

‘They too were nothing to me, as I have said before. It was his character and his good actions that I admired- ‘

‘Admiration from the stone-faced maid of Tarth. High praise indeed.’

‘Colonel, if this evening should follow the fashion of the previous--’

‘No no, I shall behave myself. If I should lose your company, I should be forced to listen to Mrs. Frey in conversation with her knitting needles, and I fear I could not to bear it.’ He sighed a great sigh, and leaned his handsome, golden head against the back of his chair.  
‘Nothing from the silent giantess? No conversation? Come, I have told you I am disposed to be communicative tonight, Gods know I have no desire to be with my own thoughts. Have you no subject to introduce?’ 

‘I’m afraid I am not accustomed to perform upon command, sir.’

‘No indeed, well, perhaps we ought to dwell only on professional matters, it might make things simpler for you. To that end, would it please you to tell me what in the name of the Seven you have been playing at with your student on the Casterly grounds?’

‘Playing at, sir?’

‘Yes woman, playing at. Surely all this rough and tumble in the snow is far too much for a young lady of her rank and stature. She is but a little thing, and though it may be nothing to you as a giantess, you might have a care for how her diminutive limbs might be taxed by the activity.’

‘It is my great care,’ she found herself protesting, with such vehemence that her interrogator laughed in surprise, ‘I find she is much improved by the exercise.’

‘The things I have observed! Throwing snow, picking her up and flinging her about, it’s far too excitable, can’t you agree? I commissioned a governess under the misapprehension that young ladies were meant to be inside with needlework and water colours and the pianoforte, am I so mistaken?’

‘I dislike to shock you sir, but I have rather different views on the subject of children’s education, and what manner of environment is most conducive to a child’s health and happiness.’

‘Heaven help us, she has views on the subject. Go on, Miss Tarth, I will hear your defense.’

Brienne drew herself up a little in her chair. She could not be entirely certain that the conversation would not end in her dismissal, but she suspected that it was more for his own continued amusement that he challenged her. And so she proceeded;  
‘Little girls are no different from boys in their need for varied recreation. A program of learning that intersperses concentrated studies with physical activity is essential for inducing focus. Myrcella in particular is energetic and athletic, it might surprise you to learn. In our early lessons she could scarcely sit for more than a few minutes together. I found that with a few recesses to expend her excess energies, she was better able to bend her concentration to her work. Under such a program she has progressed prodigiously.’

‘You praise yourself highly, Miss Tarth.’

‘I praise Myrcella, Colonel. She is an acutely intelligent child, she requires merely the appropriate conditions to develop that intelligence.’  
‘I have also made an investigation into the kinds of books in use in your school room, and found an inordinate number of the old tales of knights and dragons had been scrounged up from the shelves. How do you answer to that charge?’

‘I hear no charge.’

‘The charge that you are filling a child’s head with nonsense rather than dependable pretty accomplishments that will one day win her a husband or the regard of society or whatever such.’

‘The most crucial task for her now is to develop her independent mind and thought. Pretty accomplishments can come later.’

‘Such controversial opinions! Tell me, do you like the stories of knights and ladies, Miss Tarth? Do you fancy yourself the knight or the lady?’ 

Her eyes narrowed. ‘I fancy myself a governess, sir. And I suppose you fancy yourself the knight?’  
This remark slipped out before she could stop herself, and it seemed to surprise them both.

‘Being a knight is too arduous. They make you swear and swear.’

‘And yet you are a military man, sir.’

‘I was that indeed.’

‘But no longer?’ She found she savored taking the offensive; his face had shifted from sport to annoyance.

‘Yes, my admirable father saw to that, considering the circumstances, as you can imagine.’

‘I cannot, sir.’

‘Cannot imagine what would induce him to buy my rank for me to preserve the shreds of family appearances while ensuring I would never serve again?’

‘I am not aware of the circumstances.’

‘You mean to tell me that you have been so removed from the world that no mention of my illustrious career penetrated your cozy Lowood nest?’

‘A very little.’

‘A very little! So that disdainful look you give me now is based on what, pray? My displeasing looks? I dare say you know more than you say Miss Tarth. I wonder if might I entreat you to make it known? To be perfectly candid, without fear of consequence? Everything you think you know about myself and my history. Sordid details and all.’

‘I know of no sordid details; I only know what little was related to me at Lowood. I had heard that your military career had a shadow of scandal cast upon it; that it concerned your role in the death of your commanding officer some years ago.’

‘Oh, that and a great deal more besides, I expect. Yet you accepted a position in my household. Why? Why remain here with a brigand like myself?’

‘In truth sir?’

‘Without consequence.’

‘There is always consequence in speaking truthfully, sir.’

‘I suspect that it is your nature to speak it regardless, Miss Tarth, rather than commit the dishonour of deceit or concealment.’ He was taunting her, drawling the word ‘dishonor’ as though in disdain for honour itself. She could not restrain herself.

‘Then in truth I felt concern for the child in your care, sir,’ she said heatedly, ‘I accepted the position, because I felt that the solitary child, condemned to reside in an infamous household, would be exposed to a similarly infamous manner of living, and would be in want of proper guardianship.’

A pause. She had shocked him. His look was dark and furious, as it had been on that first night by the fire. But then as now, the wave of his anger fell ere it crested, and he withdrew into himself.

‘Not the penknife this time, but the sabre,’ he said quietly. He stared into his glass and drank deeply from it. ‘So I am an improper guardian. You do not spare me, Miss Tarth.’

‘You requested the truth, sir, and you were correct in noting that I believe myself bound to give it, when asked.’

He reached for the decanter at his elbow, and a stream of crimson poured forth to wink through the glass like a garnet. He spoke with a terrible bitterness:  
‘You puzzled me that first evening I encountered you, Miss Tarth. And though in the intervening days you have been driven from my thoughts, I found my curiosities return on this bleak midwinter’s night. But now I know what lies beneath your breast. Yes, just now, as you sit with an air as grave and righteous as a damned septa, I find all my sins, imagined and otherwise, brought before me.

My late sister was married to the eldest Baratheon. Perhaps you were unaware, but the eldest was not Mr. Stannis Baratheon, parson, director of Lowood school; there was too a Robert Baratheon, and it was he who was my sister’s husband. My sister whose child you now have in your care.’ 

Brienne involuntarily looked to the flaxen head now bent over her dolls at the table, occupied in marching them up and down. He continued, ‘When you spoke the name Baratheon on that previous evening- suffice it to say a great many memories were brought to the forefront of my mind. The child whom you have taken it upon yourself to shield from my moral decrepitude is none other than my niece, and my last remaining family in this world. A villain and blaggard I may be Miss Tarth, but I would rather die than harm her.’

Brienne sat in uncomfortable silence for a moment.  
‘I am sorry for your loss, sir.’ She swallowed, unsure of how to continue. ‘I know something of what it is to be without family. And to have lost siblings.’

He was staring into the fire now, not acknowledging her. 

‘I judged too swiftly and too harshly sir. It was unworthy of me to make assumptions--’

‘A giantess who lurks in country lanes and works enchantments, and yet a septa who flogs the sinner,’ He sat forward in his chair, resuming his sour, mocking manner, ‘I have nearly found you out, Miss Tarth. Perhaps you will not hold a mystery for me any longer. And now I perceive that the subject of our conflict has come to bid a command to her keeper.’

Myrcella had indeed come forward, and, keeping a wary eye on her guardian, approached Brienne to tug on her sleeve. Brienne bent her ear to the child to hear her whisper a reminder that it was high time for bed. She whispered in the girl’s ear in return. Throughout this exchange, she was sharply aware that the Colonel watched them intently, with an unfettered smile.

Brienne rose and took Myrcella’s hand. The small arm was obliged to reach nearly straight up, to compensate for the disparity in their heights.

‘I have been reminded of the late hour, and it is time for Myrcella to be put to bed. She has something further to relate to you, sir.’ 

‘My present is very lovely.’ This phrase, uttered in charming susurrus, like silk rustling on silk, as quiet as the voice of a moth, caused a look of sadness to come over the Colonel’s smiling face.  
‘I am pleased you find it so,’ he returned in a voice as gravelled as the child’s was soft, ‘I bid you goodnight, ladies.’

As she pulled the coverlet up to Myrcella’s fine little chin, and pressed a kiss to her pale forehead, Brienne looked down upon the green eyes as they flickered closed, and realized that the very same pair were to be found beneath that stately golden brow which she had lately left, furrowed in trouble and beneath the weight of unspoken things; eyes which had variously mocked and sparkled and narrowed viciously, and yet which wetly shone at the shy words of a child whose face held their mirror.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you thank you thank you to everyone who has read this!! This is my first work, and it's all been so amazingly encouraging. I hope my interpretation doesn't disappoint!  
> I've mapped the story out to the end, and plan to publish a chapter or two each week, if all goes well...


	4. Laughter In the Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Then a long, soft moan traveled down the hallway; she startled abruptly awake. Her heart began to gallop in her chest and she wished desperately that she had kept her candle alight. Had she heard it? Was she dreaming? She stopped her breath and over the pounding of her heart, listened, listened, listened…
> 
> Nocturnal creepiness, fire, and Brienne to the rescue!

Brienne could not guess the hour, though it was undoubtedly deep into the night and on the verge of morning. She had passed many fitful hours, turning over and over in her bed, trying to rid herself of the troublesome memories which rose unbidden when her tired mind could mount no defense.

She had, some time before, heard the low murmur from overhead, and then a thump and scrape along the floor. But perhaps this was only Jeyne Poole, going about her strange business. 

Then a long, soft moan traveled down the hallway; she startled abruptly awake. Her heart began to gallop in her chest and she wished desperately that she had kept her candle alight. Had she heard it? Was she dreaming? She stopped her breath and over the pounding of her heart, listened, listened, listened…

At her chamber door, there was a light touch, as though fingers brushed the panel as they groped along the dark corridor. ‘Who is there?’ she called.  
Only silence answered; silence endured. She remained motionless, sitting up, listening hard, for she knew not how long. A hush had fallen over the whole house. The clock in the hall struck two. She lowered her head to the pillow again. 

A fiendish laugh gurgled at the very keyhole of the door, seeming as though it came from a creature crouched at her very bedside. She leapt from the bed and across to the fire place and seized an iron poker.  
‘Who is there?’ She called again. 

Steps shuffled away and the infernal murmuring retreated down the hallway again. Could it really be Jeyne Poole? Was she quite well, possessed by some devil? She ought to rouse Mrs. Frey to be witness to the girl’s madness, something must be done. Or was it an intruder? 

She paused to fill her lungs, then flung her door violently open, stopping to look each way frantically, her hands tensed about her weapon, held aloft, ready to swing.

Nothing. She slowly rounded the corner. At the end of the corridor by the stair burned two candles; one in its sconce, the other knocked to the floor. A haze drifted about them, like a heavy mist rolling through the house, curling along the ceiling, and she realized all at once that it was smoke.

And further past the candles and the stair, in the other wing of the hall, she could see the Colonel’s door, ajar, blue smoke billowing thence, just visible in the darkness. All other thought was blotted from her mind as she ran heavily toward it and threw the door open, pressed her sleeve to her face, and entered the chamber. 

The bed was ablaze; its hangings all white with fire. In the center of it all, illuminated, the Colonel lay sprawled, unmoving. 

‘Wake! Wake up!’ She bellowed and plunged between the fiery hangings to shake him. He was as limp as a rag doll, unconscious, stupefied by the smoke. She raced across the room, her throat already searing from inhaling the volcanic air, her eyes stinging, and seized the pitcher from the wash basin, throwing its contents on the Colonel. He did not move. 

With a roar she steeled herself against the heat, lunging forward again to drag him to the edge of the bed. She wrapped her arms beneath his, about his chest, and pulled him from the inferno. His heels hit the floor and she heaved him to the middle of the room. She slapped his face rapidly, and he stirred, mumbling. She turned to the bed once more, and pulled off the drenched coverlet, covering both her arms with it as she seized the burning hangings and began to tear them down, corner by corner. 

Behind her the Colonel woke and began to cough and sputter, mumbling, ‘Seven hells, why am I wet, what the devil goes on, what have you done with me?’  
She beat the coverlet against the blaze, and smoke flew into her eyes, embers danced in the air about her. 

He had gained his feet, and with a coat in his hands, he joined her in bludgeoning the flames. Slowly they were dying, but new bright sections sprang up where they had quelled them before. Heat enveloped her, she could not tell any longer what was fire and what was flesh, when suddenly a new cry went up from the Colonel. She looked to him and found he looked fiercely at her, at the hem of her nightdress which was now in flames. She cried out and he leapt at her, and in a flurry of hands they ripped the gown from her shoulders and when it fell to the ground she jumped from it and he lashed it with the heavy coat until it was still, until all was still, and only the smoke was left. 

They stood, panting and coughing side by side for a few sparse moments. The Colonel was doubled over, his hands on his knees, gasping for clean air. Then he looked up at her, and in the same instant they realized that she was as naked as the day of her birth. 

When she later thought of it, she would remind herself that she must have been mistaken, for it seemed to her that they were each frozen in place for several minutes, though it could not have been so. She would also blush at the dream-like remembrance that she, for those long moments, made no move to cover herself, nor he to look away. The smoke that lingered heavily was painted with silver from the moonlight shining like a beacon through the window, and the same silver illuminated her pale form. She could see his face was open and astonished, and she watched as his eyes brushed down the length of her, slowly, and back again. Impossible. Then he was only looking into her eyes. 

A noise from the corridor outside snapped them both abruptly to their senses and their eyes flew to the door. She turned and crossed her arms over her small chest, as he groped about for his dressing gown and tossed it to her. He was out the door already as she fumbled it over her broad shoulders and tremblingly tied the sash. He dashed back again to her, his eyes frantic. 

‘Did you see who did this?’

‘No sir. I heard--’

‘You heard what?’

‘A-a voice, laughing, footsteps in the hall.’

‘Stay here Miss Tarth, I will return, shut the door--’

‘Sir, I had best go with you--’

‘You’ll be safe here--’

‘Seven take safe sir, we must find who has done this--’

‘Remain _here_ Miss Tarth, shut the door, I will come back’

‘No sir--’ 

A crash again sounded from far off, and he cursed. Brienne pushed past him out into the hall. 

‘Brienne!’ he roared, and grabbed hold of her arm. She looked ferociously into his eyes and whispered hoarsely, _‘Myrcella.’_ His eyes widened, he dropped his hands, and she raced down to the child’s door, which was mercifully closed tight. 

She heard him storm up the stairs to the third level. She pressed her ear to the door, and listened, but heard nothing stir from within. She remained there, tensed, in the dark hallway for some minutes, her raw throat aching. 

Then a shadowy figure appeared upon the stair, having run up from below. Brienne’s breath caught. The figure saw her, and froze. In the next moment, the figure bolted up the next staircase, and Brienne launched herself after it. Up the flight, in the darkness, just ahead of her, she could hear bare footfall slapping on the stone steps, but could not see. She rounded the landing, following up the next flight, taking the steps three at a time, but at the top she ran full force into the Colonel. 

Her body collided with his, and he held her there, so she could not pass him without throwing him down. His hands gripped her arms tightly; she could not seeing where the figure had escaped to. Her chest heaved, pressed against his, and she breathed heavily through her nose, like a stallion brought up short from a gallop, her eyes wild. She was only dimly aware of his closeness, his leg between hers, his chin to her shoulder. 

'Brienne, listen to me,’ said he, in a voice low and urgent, a voice she could feel against her skin and somehow deep within her, ‘You must wait for me in my study. You must trust me now. Do not call for anyone. I will explain what I can. Do you understand?’ 

She could only nod. ‘Then go.’ said he, and released her. 


	5. Oathbreaker

She passed through the still-smoking chamber to the Colonel’s private study beyond it, and there settled in a chair to wait. The clock down the hall struck three, then half past. The action in her blood had subsided, leaving her mind curiously blank; questions which had churned its surface in inarticulate tumult only an hour before now surfaced slowly and gently, one by one, then disappeared. The only constant, which pealed again and again like a small bell, was that he had used her name. Brienne. 

She was startled when the bedroom door creaked on its hinges, and an orb of candlelight approached, but she knew him by his cough, wretched and ragged.  
‘It is done, I have found it all out.’ His voice sounded worn and tired, and he waved a hand vaguely to indicate she ought to remain. 

He crossed to his desk and poured two glasses of brandy, and handed one to her before collapsing into a chair, bringing his hand to his temple.  
‘It’s as if the smoke is still behind my eyes,’ he muttered, ‘I forget whether you said you saw the person at your chamber door?’

‘No, sir.’ Brienne perched tensely on the edge of her seat, the glass in her lap.  
The candle, in illuminating its little circle, only made her aware of the deep shadows that encompassed them, of the unknown corners of the room where its light did not reach. The myriad questions resurfaced with violent force.

‘Why do you shield the person who did this?’ She asked slowly. He groaned. 

‘Can we not sit peaceably?’

‘Why would you not have me call for anyone? Who was that person?’ 

‘I cannot say.’

‘You shelter them under the same roof as a child-’

‘She’s perfectly safe,’ he threw his head back to drain his glass, ‘And I hardly think that you are one to judge of safety, Miss, if it is indeed true that half the children at Lowood and your precious Renly succumbed to scarlet fever under your stewardship.’

It was as if he had stabbed her, or pressed a brand to her heart. She was on her feet, once again looming over him before she could make sense of her thoughts. The glass of brandy had fallen to the carpet. 

This time no look of anger passed over him. He was immediately chastened, and shamefaced and would not meet her glare.

‘That - was unworthy, forgive me. It - it must have been terrible for you-’

‘Do not mock me sir,’ she said, coursing with quiet rage.

‘I’m _apologizing_ ,’ he looked up to her; his eyes found and held hers, with an earnestness that disarmed her. ‘I’m sick of fighting.’  
Slowly he knelt and picked up the delicate slip of glass that had fallen. For all its cruel treatment, it was, marvelously, unbroken. He gestured for her to resume her chair, still on his knee beneath her in his strange supplicating posture. Her cheeks burned and her jaw clenched, but she lowered herself into her seat once more, as he rose and returned to the desk to fill the two snifters again.

When he returned and she took one from his hand, she sipped carefully and regarded him over the rim.

He sighed bitterly. ‘It may be dark, Miss Tarth, but there is moonlight enough to see and recognize that look on your face. That look has been my frequent friend for these many years. For nearly half my life, it has been my reward for seeking out the society of others. You all suspect or despise me.’ He drank off the second glass, and began to cough violently. ‘You think me a murderer then, who keeps company with other scoundrels and criminals, is that it? That is who you think I shelter here, is it not?’ He succumbed to the cough again, beating his hand across his chest, ‘-Godsdamned smoke...If I should faint, shut the door on your way out -’ 

‘If you offered any other explanation, I would hear it.’

‘What do you know of the campaign in Essos?’ She looked at him in surprise. ‘About as much as any other Westerosi schoolgirl I expect,’ he continued, ‘the war to keep Pentos in the empire, after they got ideas of their own, tried to take back their ports. And have you heard of wildfire?’

‘Of course.’

‘Targaryen was obsessed with it, the old dragon. Something in him had gone sour during that campaign. He was a decorated hero from the Second Dothraki War, a military genius, and well-acquainted with war in the East; he spoke of tactics, of how we had to use it to expose the rebels - but I saw it in his eyes. He only loved to watch things burn - villages, people, women, children.’  
The Colonel was leaned forward, his forearms resting on his knees, candlelight flickering across his haunted expression, as he continued;

‘We had besieged the Bay of Pentos, and the General had caches of wildfire lain against the city walls, all about the harbour, and it lay ready to catapult into the city itself. For weeks we sat and waited, giving them time to surrender the city to us before we destroyed it, brick and mortar and temple.

I attended him in his tent, just he and I, when the word arrived - that the Prince of Pentos sought to surrender peacefully. But Targaryen refused to believe it, he insisted that it was a ploy to lure us into the walls to slaughter us. I will never forget the wildness in his look - ‘burn them all,’ he said, over and over, ‘burn them all!’ He began to babble that they had rejected our terms, that they were preparing to attack. Then he shot the messenger in the face. He bade me join him in giving the order to strike. When he made to leave the tent I- I planted a bullet in the back of his head before he stepped outside. And that is how they found me.’

‘Does no one know this?

‘There was suspicion enough of his madness among the other commanders that they did not pursue me. Yet they wanted me out. No officer, no enlisted man could ever look upon me with respect again; the oath breaker, the man without honor, the man who killed his sworn commander. I was arrested, but never charged. My father bought my higher rank, on the condition that I would never be placed with an active unit again. That title is a mockery. I am a Colonel, and yet never again will I serve as I was meant to serve. Never again to be a protector of the realm-’ 

His head was pressed into his hands, his fingers gripping his hair as though he meant to tear it out; he was seized by a coughing fit, his breath was shallow and fast, feral and ragged; ‘I am judged - and condemned to ignominy by - those who know me not, I am - despised by all. By what right do the wolves judge the lion?’ He gasped for air and suddenly pitched forward in a swoon, and crumpled to the floor. 

Brienne fell to her knees at his side. ‘Sir! Colonel Lannister! Colonel, wake up.’ She gently shook his shoulders, quite at a loss. How much smoke had he inhaled that night? His shirt was open at the collar enough to show the tawny hollow of his throat, the cleft of his broad chest.

She hesitatingly raised her hand to his face to tap his cheek, but his eyelids fluttered and he muttered, ‘Jaime- my name -is Jaime..’

‘Sir, you must sit up.’

He blinked blearily up at her, with eyes that were soft and unfocused, ‘I knew you would do me good in some way. I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you.’ 

Brienne gaped. He did not know to whom he spoke. She pulled him gently upright and leaned him against the legs of his chair.

‘Shall I make tea, sir, or perhaps-’ she paused, as she did not consider another brandy to be of merit.

‘Would it have made any difference at all?’ he murmured.

‘Sir?’

‘If you had not pulled me from the flames, had I died tonight. If I cannot serve, what am I? A Colonel with no regiment. A warrior with no sword.’

‘You are delirious, sir, you know not what you say.’

‘I know that nothing ties me to this earth. Even the child would be better without me. I am fitted only for ridicule and hate. I ought to end myself, hurl myself from the old battlements into the sea.’

‘This behaviour is cowardly, sir, and beneath you.’

‘What is cowardly?’

‘ _You_ are cowardly.’

‘The governess thinks me a coward...’

‘Yes, I do indeed. You have had every advantage conferred upon you; in wealth, in rank, in appearance you are superior to most everyone else, and yet at your first taste of deprivation-’

‘My first taste!’

‘-A taste of the losses that ordinary people endure without comfort, you whine and cry like a child.’

‘Woman, I have lived through such tragedies and horrors-’

‘As have I. Not limited those you alluded to this very evening. But I had not the luxury of giving up.’

‘And I suppose you weathered your storms without shedding a tear?’

‘On the contrary sir; I buried my dead and mourned them, but I believe I am bound to strive for purpose, even after fate has taken it from me, or I have failed in pursuing it.’ 

They sat quietly for a few moments, each lost within themselves. It occurred to Brienne what an odd picture they made; a handsome lord in his shirtsleeves, reclining side by side on the floor of his study with a great, mannish woman, clad only in a gentleman’s dressing gown, sharing their silences. Had she ever passed a stranger night? Had he? At length he spoke;

‘You must allow me to apologize again for my...I had only heard of the fever at Lowood from one of my agents the day before last, and it was fresh in my mind, I -’

‘Thank you, sir.’

Another silence reigned. At the same moment, he began to cough heavily again, and she began to say, ‘The hour is late, I ought to-’ He doubled over, his hand to his chest.  
‘Shall I stay? What do you require?’

‘No, no, I shall be right as rain.’ His hand brushed her arm as he waved her off. ‘Brienne, I must insist that you say nothing of this night. I will account for this state of affairs. I assure you, the child is in no danger. But there are reasons you cannot know. Do you trust me?’

‘I - I trust you, sir.’

‘And you saw nothing of the person who was here?’ She shook her head. ‘But you heard a strange laugh?’ 

‘There is a woman here, a strange girl, named Jeyne Poole. I believe it was her laugh I heard.’

‘Just so. Jeyne Poole. She is, as you say, a strange person. I shall take care of the matter. I am glad though, that you are the only person acquainted with the details of this incident. And now it is near four - the servants will be waking soon. I shall do very well on the sofa in the library for tonight I suppose.’ He effortfully began to pull himself up, and Brienne moved instinctively to assist him until he was on his feet. She drew away.

‘Goodnight then, sir.’

He turned again to her in surprise. ‘What, will you leave me? And in that way?’

‘You must rest sir, as must I.’

‘But not without taking leave. Not without the scarcest word of acknowledgement of what has passed this night. You have saved my life, Brienne of Tarth, giantess of Casterly Rock,’ his old amused smile appeared, ‘You must not quit me as though we were merely strangers. After all, a great deal has been, shall we say, revealed…’ he surveyed her, pointedly, ‘which reminds me, I must eventually reclaim my dressing gown, you know.’ He laughed at her returning look of horror.

‘Sir, if ever _you_ breathe a word of what has passed this night, you will find yourself again in the midst of an inescapable inferno-’

‘I don’t doubt it. But come, shake hands at least. Comrades in nocturnal intrigue, are we not?’

He extended his hand to her, and she reached out her own, as broad and tall as his, and he grasped it warmly.

‘You have saved my life. I don’t believe there is a being alive to whom I could stand to be obliged for such a service, but you - I have a pleasure in owing you a debt. I cannot say more.’  
His look at that moment bore many curious quantities that she felt she could not and dared not name. Then he shook his head a little, as if to stir himself from some dream.

‘I am glad I happened to be awake,’ she replied, departing. Again, he looked at her in mild surprise.

‘What, _will_ you go?’

‘The servants, sir. Mrs. Frey will be -’

‘Of course. Of course. Goodnight, Brienne.’

He watched her go, and she stole one final glance at him as she went out; his eyes glittering, the warm flesh at his shirt collar gleaming. She pulled the front of the dressing gown tightly closed over her breast as she made her way down the corridor. Before she could stop herself, she brought the collar to her nose and breathed. Beneath the pervading smell of smoke was something more; the scent of tobacco, musk, some indefinable imprint of him. 

Once she had regained her chamber she cast it off directly, and pulled her own linen shift over her head. She left the gown where it fell, and did not allow herself to touch it again.


	6. Gareth and Lynette

“ ‘So till the dusk that followed evensong  
Rode on the two, reviler and reviled;  
Then after one long slope was mounted, saw,  
Bowl-shaped, through tops of many thousand pines  
A gloomy-gladed hollow slowly sink  
To westward — in the deeps whereof a mere,  
Round as the red eye of an Eagle-owl,  
Under the half-dead sunset glared -’”

Brienne’s voice carried over the low rush and trickle of the stream, her verse punctuated by an occasional splash where Myrcella struck the surface of the water with a stick. The governess was reclined on the bank, the book held over her head, while the pupil hopped about like a gull on the rocks, brandishing the branch as a sword, hacking at imaginary foes in the current. 

“Myrcella, are you not cold?” Brienne called.

The splashing ceased, then recommenced with renewed vigor. It was but early spring, and though the frost had faded from the land, and green buds sprouted from the fingertips of the trees in Casterly’s park, the wind still was brisk and the water was icy. As such, any activity near the stream was expressly verboten by Mrs. Frey, who warned sternly of consumption and chill; but Brienne had agreed to let Myrcella overturn rocks and carry out her fancy in exchange for an additional grammar lesson, and each considered the arrangement a fair one. Nonetheless, it would not do to let the girl turn blue. 

“We must return when I’ve finished this verse.”

She tried to find her place again, but found her thoughts carried off. Just-blossoming branches against the cornflower blue of the sky; damp, green air, fresh and warm enough to permit of lying on a grassy (if muddy) knoll; the spring had come, though she feared it never would. 

She had not seen the Colonel since the night of the fire, nearly two months prior. It was typical of him, Mrs. Frey had said lightly over the breakfast table the following morning, as the ruined hangings still smoldered in his bedchamber; he would go to King’s Landing first, and then perhaps to Dorne, or any number of places, and would likely not return for another year. Brienne had felt a strange emptiness yawn in her chest, and came to realize that it was a shade rather like disappointment. 

But why, she reasoned, should she be disappointed? It was not as though the Colonel’s activities had any bearing on her own, nor had she been dependent upon him for company, amusement, or anything besides, except, notionally, her employment. 

When she thought of that night, it was with a kind of awe that such intimacies had been conferred, and his foundational secrets confessed to her of all people; though, she reminded herself, he had been delirious from the smoke and excitement of the night’s escapade - he might have confessed himself even to Mrs. Frey after such exploits. 

What more often occupied her was the conviction that the sinister inmate of Casterly lingered there still. She would every now and again hear the shuffling and rough laughter above her. Brienne had taken to rising once or twice in the night and checking the door to Myrcella’s room. She was no longer certain that the barefoot fugitive was Jeyne Poole herself, though the girl was almost certainly involved in some way, to be seen coming down or going up to the third floor several times in a day. Yet she did, in spite of herself, trust the Colonel’s words. He would not have permitted any arrangement that left the child in danger; she had only to recall the furrow in his brow, the plaintive entreaty in his look when he assured her.

Her sleep had become confused and fitful, as her body willed her to be alert to any new threat. Now and again she was roused by unbidden visions of fingers slowly parting the collar of the dressing gown over her chest, golden hands sweeping over her hips as the silken garment was pushed to the floor; but these, like the dressing gown itself, she shoved hastily away beneath piles of ordinary things at the bottom of her case, lest they should be somehow discovered. 

Then, three days ago, Mrs. Frey had received a letter which very nearly caused the old woman to capsize in her chair.  
"It’s from Mr. Tyrion!" She squealed, "The master and his brother are returning, and with a large party - we are to prepare the best bedrooms and put the house to rights. I shall have to hire more kitchen hands from the George Inn in Lannisport, and oh, I shall only have three days before they arrive - Oh! Such a lively spring we shall have!"

Mr. Tyrion Lannister, Brienne at length learned, was the Colonel’s younger brother, lately returned from some years spent in Dorne; _"He’s a dwarf,"_ Mrs. Frey added in a heavy whisper, for no one’s benefit in particular, "yet he is the jolliest one of the Lannisters by far, a man of tremendous levity. Perhaps a little too fond of his Dornish wines, between you and I, my dear, but a merrier man you’ll seldom meet. I doubt this was Colonel Lannister’s doing. Any gathering sounds like the work of Mr. Tyrion to me. But it will be a welcome change to this house, will it not, Miss Tarth? Some lovely times we were once accustomed to have here, in the old days. All the ladies and gentlemen, from the finest houses, gathered here for feast days and high days...Lord Tywin made sure of it. But after all the misfortunes, the Colonel, whom as you might guess, is not fond of society, has never made Casterly a place for merrymaking." 

She sighed wistfully, and Brienne could not help but think that a lady so devoted to liveliness and company was ill-suited to a lonely place like Casterly, grand and respected as it was. For herself, she felt the same heaviness in her bones again, and a tugging in her heart, seeming to warn of the hopes that she would live to see faded, were she to remain in one place for too long, were she not able to seek a bit of life all of her own making.

But soon, for a time at least, Casterly would be busy and full of life once more. And so the chandeliers were lowered and the sheets were pulled from the fine furniture. A fire was lit in every hearth, and every bed was festooned with hangings and linens. An army of hands laid carpets; glasses were polished and cushions fluffed, flagstones were scrubbed, and from a vase on every table spilled effusions of flowers in every hue. The chandeliers were raised once more, now glittering in anticipation. 

Mrs. Frey had attempted to impress Brienne into her service, turning her over to the cook to be taught make custards and cheesecakes and Dornish pastry, but each quickly realized the uselessness of such an engagement when Brienne, in her earnest effort, had flattened a copper bowl and snapped two wooden spoons like twigs in her grasp in a single afternoon. The cook had gently but insistently expelled her from the kitchen, exhorting her to never return. Brienne and Myrcella were henceforth banished to sit quietly on a bench in the great hall, or else to roam the grounds. 

The guests were due to arrive the next day, and Brienne had determined that they ought to take advantage of the free air, before they were confined to the school room and Mrs. Frey’s chambers for the duration of the visit.

She gave up trying to find her way back into the verse, and instead dropped the book to her chest to better study the sky. Yesterday, Mrs. Frey had mentioned that Margaery Tyrell would be one of the company, and Brienne, who had been rousing the fireplace, nearly stumbled head first into the hearth. 

"There are other lovely ladies, yes, but Miss Tyrell is the truly their queen. She is the finest looking girl in this part of the country to be sure; such a graceful figure, high cheeks, with beautiful colour, the glossiest darkest curls you can imagine…"

Brienne, blinking back the sting of tears in her eyes and nose, could not but agree, recalling the powerful impression of beauty, of refinement and vitality that confronted her when Renly had visited Lowood to introduce Miss Tyrell as his betrothed.  
Miss Tyrell had smiled and pressed Brienne’s hand with a genuine warmth, as though nothing could be more pleasing than to meet a hulking, desperately plain teacher at the charity school her soon-to-be-husband stewarded. As if her magnificence were not enough, Brienne had felt also her kindness, and this, if possible, made the pain still greater, that his betrothed should be in every way worthy of him. 

Though it had been nearly two years since, she could still feel the phantom of the cold ache that consumed her as she watched them strolling arm in arm in the lane on the Lowood grounds. She had heard the girl’s laughter, light and pleasing as silver bells, as Renly waved his arm about, engaging her in some joke. She had felt as desolate, as irretrievably lost as sand dissolving beneath a wave. And now, that brilliant, handsome girl would be here. She wondered if Miss Tyrell too still wept at night for his memory.  
She closed her eyes and tried to recall his face, as she had so often before, but found, as ever, that she could no longer see him in his entirety. She could see a ghost of his smile, and remember his figure, the colour of his beard, but what of his eyes? She knew they had been blue, but could she _see_ them yet? She put her hand to her mouth to stifle a sob. He was disappearing from her. And there would be a day when she could no longer see him at all.

She roused herself, and leapt to her feet suddenly, calling to Myrcella - it was high time they returned to the house. The little blonde sprite ran up the bank toward her, and with a toothy grin proffered to her a second branch.  
"You will be Gareth!" she said, breathlessly, "And I - I will be the fourth knight."

"The fourth knight! You remember who the fourth knight is!"

"Death!" and the girl collapsed in giggles. Brienne shook her head; a queer child indeed. But she raised her stick and placed her other hand gallantly on her hip;

"Well then, Sir Death, I will defeat you and rescue the sister of Lady Lynette!"

Myrcella’s expression became serious, and she raised her arboreal weapon above her head to smack at Brienne’s. Slowly, gently, but determinedly, their branch-blades met again and again, occasionally one or the other supplying the sound of clanging metal, as they mimicked the meager fifth-hand fencing knowledge that Brienne had gleaned from a fellow student at Lowood, who had in turn learned it from his uncle, who had perhaps once watched a proper duel. 

Just as the battle intensified, Myrcella’s eyes flew wide as she saw something behind Brienne.

"Look! It's Lady Lynette!" and she fell to the ground laughing once more. Brienne whirled around to see the Colonel himself approaching her, a half-smile cocked on his face.  
She could only gape, while Myrcella rolled over, cheering "Lady Lynette!" as though it were the greatest joke in all the world. Brienne recovered herself and rushed forward.

"Myrcella, rise please. Mrs. Frey will be most displeased if we return covered in mud, will she not?"  
"Please!” said the Colonel, striding forward to stand beside her, "don’t stop on my account." He suddenly lunged forward and scooped up the helplessly giggling girl and swung her high over his head. 

"What do you say Sir Gareth, shall we throw the knight of Death into the river to be eaten by the Lady of the Lake?" 

"That’s not how it goes!" Myrcella cackled.

"By all means, Lady Lynette," Brienne returned, smiling broadly.

And he made as though to swing the child into the stream, stopping up short each time, as she shrieked and laughed and protested.  
As the three of them made their way slowly back to the house, the Colonel was granted the rare favor of holding Myrcella’s small hand, warming the tiny pink fingers in his own broad palm.

"But where is your horse, Sir?"

"I thought to avoid a second bewitchment upon that enchanted hill, and so I left him in Millcote to save myself the trouble of falling off. Besides, it is a very fine day for the walk."

"And all your fine guests?"

"Will arrive tomorrow, as promised. I rode ahead of the company. Mrs. Frey would have my hide if I turned up with a host of guests before her preparations were complete. Much as the old bird does dodder on, she is a Lannister by birth, and ought to be accorded some small regard. You didn’t know? She is only a Frey by marriage. Were her hair not grey, or perpetually embonneted, you would be quite convinced; when she was young, it was as golden as mine is now."

"Yours is not quite so gold any longer, Sir. I rather thought it contained more silver."

"Ah-ha, laugh now Miss Tarth, but as penance for that cruel remark, I shall inflict my own cruelty upon you. I demand that you join us in the drawing room after supper is had tomorrow. You and the child must sit and endure the company of all the silly ladies, as I must, and frown freely, as I may not."

"Sir, I hardly think -"

"I must insist, Miss Tarth. Fear not, the ladies will pet and coo over this one, they will hardly glance at you." He jostled Myrcella’s arm, and was rewarded with a scowl, and a re-seizure of the proffered limb. Brienne felt curiously stung by his casual remark, though she could not fathom why.

"I must warn you, I have nothing worthy enough to wear in such company," she shrugged.

"I assure you, in a room full of peacocks, who will notice the dove? Or should I rather say, the albatross?" 

Brienne rolled her eyes deeply. "Come Myrcella, we might take some tea and avoid Mrs. Frey until she is quite finished her rampage," and she moved briskly past the Colonel into the side door at which they had arrived.

"Good day Colonel," she said breezily, as she swept the girl inside.

"I shall have the pleasure of your company tomorrow night, Miss Tarth, or I shall be forced to come up and fetch you myself." He bowed, and turned on his heel. 

Over tea, Brienne ventured to inquire of Myrcella why the Colonel had been designated as Lady Lynette in their game.

"She teases Sir Gareth," she replied thoughtfully, through a mouthful of toast, "but in the end she loves him."

"Wicked child," Brienne chastised affectionately, "do not speak while you eat. Perhaps we should read a different story tonight, hmm? Have we not had enough of Gareth and Lynette?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brienne reads from Tennyson's 'Idylls of the King,' from which the nicer version of the tale of Gareth and Lynette is derived.  
> Now that the madness of the holidays is over, I'm trying to get back to a semi-regular posting schedule.  
> Thanks as always for the lovely comments! EVERYONE IS THE BEST.


	7. In Company

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short installment as I sort some structural issues within the work! Something a little more dramatic in store for next week, I promise. After that, stay tuned for an encounter with a 'maegi' and another nocturnal escapade in weeks to come :)

She briefly regarded her face in the glass that hung in her room. Shortly she would have to collect Myrcella, and descend to join the party following dinner. She was dressed in a light grey muslin that she had worn only once, to the wedding of a fellow teacher at Lowood, and it was the best she owned.

Her face was broad, pale and plain, with no grace or feminine aspect to redeem it. Her jaw was heavy, her mouth a thick, dour line. She did not know how to dress her hair in any more attractive fashion than she had when she was a girl, obliged to wear it beneath a kerchief, and in consequence it hung limply at the temples, and gathered into a modest chignon. It had no curl or gloss; she had no ornament to crown it; if she squinted, her whole head simply faded and blurred into an inconsequential, displeasing mass.

She began to perform the exercise she had been accustomed to practice as a child, then as an adolescent; she thought of the most beautiful girl in her acquaintance, and compared herself feature by feature to that paragon of prettiness. Now, as once before, she thought of Miss Tyrell, with her full, curved mouth, delicate chin and tiny nose, her rich, raven ringlets bouncing and her dark, handsome eyes flashing. 

It was a ritual of preparation and fortification. ‘You see,’ she said to herself with calm conviction, ‘you are nothing to be marveled at; you are simply as you are. Plain and unremarkable, you cannot think to go forth and win praise or attention. You are poor, and ugly, tall and manly, entirely without connections or prospects. Yet you shall make your own way in the world, so long as you accept your limitations.’

And with this, she tilted her head back slightly to look at her reflection down the length of her masculine nose; it made her feel like an illustration of a Roman senator she had once seen: humble, but defiant, noble, and self-possessed. 

 

On Mrs. Frey’s advice, she and Myrcella entered the drawing room while the rest of the party was still at dinner; they claimed a quiet corner, and there settled with a book. 

Soon, with a clucking and tittering, indeed like a flock of birds they came. Brienne willed herself to keep her eyes on the book before her, to not let her voice waver from its low recitation, but she could see them just on the horizon of her vision; ladies in full skirts of satin, clouds of lace, pale and delicate shapes, sharing dulcet laughter. They collapsed like plump blossoms on the sofas and settees. She caught snatches of conversation about the gentlemen at dinner, about music they might sing, about families they knew. 

And though she dared not look up to ascertain, she knew where Margaery had entered, where she had alighted, could hear the gentle, silvery laughter. None of them had noticed her and the child, or else none cared.

Brienne had begun to devise a plan for how quickly they might escape, when the doors kicked open, and in a cloud of cigar smoke, the gentlemen arrived, clad all in evening black. At their fore was the shortest man Brienne had ever laid eyes on, carrying a full glass and talking loudly to another gentleman about agricultural conditions in the Riverlands; he could be none other than Tyrion Lannister.

Behind him, his hands clasped behind his back, his shoulders squared and figure tall and regal, walked the Colonel, wearing a bemused smile. For an instant, Brienne willed him to look up and meet her eyes, but he did not, and she reminded herself that this was not the Colonel she had met, but another man entirely who was here; he was host to his peers, the fine members of his class, and he was engaged by them in a way she could never comprehend. Then he made his way across the room to stand by Miss Tyrell’s chair. 

Myrcella patted her knee impatiently; she had stopped reading. At once she began again, but was somehow distracted by the knowledge that just outside her field of vision, Miss Tyrell was tossing her curls and saying something that made him laugh, as he looked upon her rich eyes and the creamy expanse of her shoulders.

It was curious to see him all alight for the company. He smirked often, as always, but also took part in pleasant, agreeable conversation with the young ladies, spoke seriously to the gentlemen. To her surprise he also often played the silent observer, as the younger Lannister so often took the floor and commanded the attention of the room with his witticisms. 

At length, Miss Tyrell arose and announced that she would have music, and made her graceful way to the pianoforte, her slender shoulders curving over the instrument as she placed her small fingers to strike the chords; here was a woman who knew that the eyes of the room followed her, and were pleased by what they saw. Her voice was a little thin, but lissome, sweet and high, delicately climbing and descending arpeggios with ease. Then, to Brienne’s great surprise, none other than the Colonel stepped up behind her bench to join her, and began to sing.

His voice was a velvety baritone that met and supported Margaery’s soprano, like two dancers, complimenting one another's steps. She felt her face grow warm and her pulse quicken. His expression as he sang was one she had never seen before, except perhaps on the night of the fire, when he sat on the floor of his study and asked her earnestly to trust him. 

Gentle applause rose up when their performance ended, and he bowed to his companion, and offered his hand to assist her up from her place. 

Suddenly, a thunderous exclamation arose from Mr. Tyrion Lannister where he reclined in a chair, and all the company looked to him in alarm.  
“By the Seven, is that my niece?” He was pointing to the window box where Myrcella sat in Brienne’s lap, and every face at once swiveled to observe them, astonished. Then he was on his feet approaching them. 

“My dear girl, do you remember your Uncle Tyrion? Brother, you didn’t tell me our little niece was already in attendance.”

Brienne gently set the child down from her lap and rose, instinctively meeting the Colonel’s eyes across the room, warily, and he returned her apprehensive expression; what would the girl do?   
Without bending to see, Brienne knew the look of reprove that would inhabit Myrcella’s face, and she silently willed the brash Mr. Lannister to be cautious in his approach, or risk incurring public rebuke and eternal juvenile wrath. 

Fortunately, the man seemed to intuit that a more diplomatic advance was required, and he extended his hand to the child, who was nearly his height. She gave it, gravely, and he bent solemnly to press a kiss to it.

“My dear, you look well,’ he said gently, ‘tell me, do you like books?”  
She nodded. 

“All sorts of books? Books about animals perhaps, and stories? I was always partial to stories about dragons.”  
She nodded.

“I have brought some tremendous volumes with me from my travels; big ones, lots of illustrations. I wonder whether you might do me the favour of reading with me tomorrow morning. Would you do me that great honour?”

This received an enthusiastic nod. 

“I should be delighted. Now, I did not intend to disturb your lesson. Please, continue.”

The Colonel now appeared at his side, turning his back to his guests. The rest of the room seemed to resume its chatter again, now that the confrontation had ended. Briefly, when she looked up, Brienne saw Miss. Tyrell looking at her, stunned; the young woman recovered herself and smiled, and nodded faintly to her. Brienne returned the gesture with a tight smile before clearing her throat and turning to the circle before her;

“Sir I rather think it time for Myrcella--”

“--To go to bed, yes Miss Tarth, I had a feeling that might be your agenda. You wish to escape us.”

“Miss Tarth, this is Miss Tarth?” exclaimed Mr. Tyrion Lannister, craning his head back to look up to her full height, “And a daunting personage, is she not. I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss. My brother has told me that you are responsible for his life.”

She met the Colonel’s eyes again, but superseded him as he opened his mouth to answer.

“In the affair of the Colonel’s clumsiness with an upended candle? Yes, I was fortunate enough to be of some small assistance in that matter,” she replied, smiling a little as he gave her a look of grateful relief, “Still more fortunate to have seized the opportunity to upend a water basin over my esteemed employer's head.”

Tyrion laughed and the Colonel’s broad smile widened.  
“As he so readily deserves it. You lodge a hero and a rebel, brother. You need watch out for this one. She’ll storm the garret if you’re not careful.”

“She is seditious in the extreme, I would not be surprised to learn that she has designs upon the house already.”

He looked at her lingeringly, and she felt herself grow warm again under his gaze, and so she dipped a small curtsy, saying,  
“Gentlemen, we must retire upstairs. We bid you good evening.”

“Goodnight ladies,” returned Mr Lannister, “I hope we will see more of you.”

As she steered Myrcella from the room, she looked back quickly to see whether the Colonel had rejoined Miss Tyrell. Instead she caught the stare of a pretty man with light blonde curls, who had halted in the middle of the room at the sight of her. It was Loras Tyrell. He regarded her darkly, his brow clouded with fury and surprise. With a sinking heart, she ducked quickly from the room, and shut the door behind them.


	8. Battlements

Every afternoon, the Colonel would hand Miss Tyrell into the saddle of a dappled grey thoroughbred, in her sumptuous burgundy riding habit, and he would mount his fine black charger. She would toss a scandalous smile over her shoulder, and the two would ride off together for several hours at a time.

“I had thought it was not likely that they should think of being married,” said Mrs. Frey from the window, “but it appears he does favour her over the other ladies, does it not? How well they look together...and she is a clever girl, she would do well with an older husband.”  
Brienne watched them go each day and supposed that yes, indeed they made a fine match; they were nearly equal in beauty, and she knew Miss Tyrell to be no simpering fool. Yet somehow she felt she did not like that they were so much together. In a shadowy corner of her mind, she felt that his attentions to a this new woman surpassed the brief confidences she herself had shared with him. She chided herself for this outrageously misplaced vanity, and tried instead to dwell in other new rhythms that had overtaken the house. 

For instance, also in the afternoons, Mr. Tyrion would appear and heave himself onto the couch in the library, sporting a headache from the previous night’s revelries, but nonetheless faithfully keeping his appointment. Brienne would adjourn lessons so that he and Myrcella might pour over the new books, and he would gradually revive in the course of these interviews (aided, curiously, by a supplementary glass of some spirit or other.) 

He was a terrifically learned man, widely-read and widely-traveled. Brienne would sit by as they read, preparing lessons, or, less frequently, earnestly attacking her clumsy needlework, if only to absorb some of his talk. She asked him many questions herself, regarding morality, ethics, and the state of Westeros, and he seemed only too pleased to expound on these themes. Rather like his elder sibling, he too seemed to find her dry, reserved exterior ample ground for provocation, yet she found him to be gentler than the Colonel in his teasing, perhaps because he was himself familiar with the burdens of possessing rather exceptional physical bearing, and was reluctant to jab at the gaps in another's carefully constructed armour. 

It was pleasing to have a sort of ally for the evenings, when she was obliged to join the party after dinner, now without the pretext of Myrcella’s presence. She would seek a corner to inhabit out of the main way of the company, and there linger over a book until it was acceptable for her to depart. After the first night, the Colonel had not again approached her, appearing too occupied with his guests’ entertainment, but Mr. Tyrion would periodically wander back to her, in various attempts to draw her out;  
“Miss Tarth, it is really is a disservice that you should quietly ensconce yourself here and deprive the room entirely of sense,” he would say, “You see before you an assortment of the silliest people in Westeros, and you are unperturbed to allow me among them freely, unaccompanied and without protection?” 

“Mr. Lannister, I think you’ll find you are in good company; I believe you are as immune to sense as you are susceptible to wine.”

“Then I shall fetch you a glass and induce you talk as little sense as I do. It would be most refreshing.”

“Certainly not. Now be off with you, or you shall alert the ravening hoards to my hiding place too.”

During these hours, she fought to keep her eyes trained on the page, even as her concentration ebbed swiftly away, and she found herself listening for the Colonel’s voice, and for the voice of Miss. Tyrell, above the din. She could not rouse herself from this involuntary surveillance; no sooner had she gathered her mind to the text, than she would realize that she had run over the same sentence again and again, without absorbing its meaning, and yet was keenly aware somehow that Miss. Tyrell had said something to make the Colonel laugh. She berated herself for this inattentiveness. She cared not for the affairs of these privileged folk; why should they confound her concentration?  
Yet she found herself obliged to turn pages she had not read, if only to keep up the pretense of absorption in her volume.  
She sought also to avoid the hostile attentions of Loras Tyrell, whom she had seen only twice more, but who seemed to be descending still deeper into a ill-humour. 

It was the third day of the party’s stay. Myrcella had been safely entrusted to Tyrion in the library; the two were on the floor reading to each other by turns. Brienne had begun by sitting in and listening, but grew restless, her thoughts discomposed, and she required some ambulatory distraction. So she began to make circuitous routes through the house, passing by the library now and again, avoiding the dining room and garden terrace, as it was likely to be the haunt of the guests, and making her way to the old terrace in the Western wing.

The sea terrace was the oldest part of Casterly, the battlements remaining from the Medieval centuries. Though the rest of the house had been expanded and modernized, brightened with glass, fine wood, wall paper, curtains and craftsmanship, the very form of the ancient defenses belied such trimmings, and made them seem as but a ribbon tied around a stone. 

She stood with her hands on the rough-hewn stone of the parapet, listening to the distant rush of the dark sea below, savouring the salt that carried up on the air - one could barely detect it in Casterly’s park, one had to stand on the sea terrace to breath it. If she closed her eyes, she was in Tarth again, in the dimly-remembered house where she had spent her childhood. She recalled little about this place, nor the people in it, save the sea, and Septa Roelle. Her father had died in the colonies after coming to ruin, having not seen her for many years. She did not know whether the scant memories she had of him were indeed memories, or imagined; the scratch of a beard at her temple or cheek, a fierce embrace. 

A voice from the archway behind her called out.  
‘Miss Brienne.’

She stiffened; ‘Good day, Mr. Tyrell.’

As he drew nearer, she could smell the musk of liquor on him, could see him sway dangerously as he strode up to lean heavily on the parapet beside her. He looked at her intently, his handsome face obscured with a sneer.

“He always spoke so highly of you, you know. Loyalty, he spoke of, always your loyalty.” Though the drink caused his words to lose their shape, he spoke viciously. She kept her eyes on the waves below, forcing herself to remain still as he leaned in to whisper with sour breath and savage hatred;  
“I dream of him every night. Every night.” He lurched back and shouted so that it echoed across the battlements, thick with slur and malice, _“I dream about wringing your neck!_ I want to choke the life from you, for what you did to him.”

“It was not I who sent for him that day, you know it,” she said quietly.

“Don’t play the innocent, foul madam, you were only too eager to call him to his death.”

“I didn’t know--”

“You only wanted him there with you - if you couldn’t have him no one would, isn’t it so? Isn’t it so?” he crowed, and shoved her so forcefully that she, though a head taller than him, staggered backwards.

She straightened and looked him in the eye. “You are drunk, Mr. Tyrell.”

“I never, never thought I’d see you again. I hoped you would die there. You great, ignorant beast. You loved him and if you couldn’t have him- so you made sure he got it. You poisoned him, you hideous slut. And did you really think! Did you really think he could even look at you? We laughed at you-” he began a cackle that bottomed out into a sob, “we laughed about how you looked at him, with your ox eyes- and you took my love away...you took him-”

Brienne’s eyes stung with tears 

“I would never have let him come, had I known-”

“You stupid whore!” He shoved her again, “He is dead because of you!”

“Unhand me, sir!”

“Tyrell!” Another voice thundered from between the arches, and in an instant the Colonel had emerged, and shoved Mr. Tyrell into the parapet, seizing his jaw in one hand and nearly forcing him off the ground. He spoke low, but with ferocious menace, his nose nearly against the trembling man’s cheek.

“You will apologize to the lady. You will make your excuses to your sister and you will leave my house at once. Do you hear me?”  
Loras Tyrell was now weeping openly, twisting his face in the Colonel’s grasp.

“Do you hear me?” he roared again.  
The younger man nodded, and was released to slump nearly to the ground. Then he lurched to his feet. “My apologies, Miss,” he mumbled, without meeting her eyes, and loped off into the house. 

The Colonel turned to Brienne, where she stood stone-still with tears streaming down her cheeks, her hands in fists at her sides, her broad jaw clenched. He stepped toward her and put his hands gently on her shoulders, “Brienne-”

But she jerked away fiercely, her eyes fixed on some far away point, as though he had startled her from sleepwalking. She turned to the wall, and braced herself against it, her hands still in fists, the knuckles white. The Colonel said nothing more, but stood beside her as she shook with strangled, silent, half-sobs. 

At length she straightened, and wiped her face in her hands, pressing the heels of her palms to her eyes, drawing deep, ragged breaths. 

“How much did you hear” she said at last. 

He only met her eyes uncomfortably, as though he would rather not repeat what he had heard. She nodded. “I didn’t kill Renly.”

“I could not have imagined it so, my lady.”

“He thinks - he thinks that I called for Renly to come to the school in the middle of the fever. Deliberately, because I knew he had never had scarlet fever before, and because I knew exposure would kill him. We sent all the children who had never had it away. I survived it as a girl, I wouldn’t be affected, and I stayed to help the sick. And he-” her voice broke under the weight of the word, “he arrived to visit the school, thinking it was like any other day. He had walked through all the rooms, talking to the sick children...To this day I do not know who summoned him there.”

“Could it be that he came of his own accord?”

“He was not due to come for some weeks more, and he was seldom one to alter his plans. Besides, I do not believe he would have so recklessly endangered himself. I believe he was sent for, by someone who meant him harm.”

“Did you love him?”

She was silent. 

“And did you...know of his relationship with Mr. Tyrell?”

Still she said nothing.  
“I don’t blame you, you know. We none of us are free to choose whom we love.” He looked out again toward the horizon. 

“Thank you, sir, for- “

“Please, Brienne, it was my honour to be of some small service. I only wish I could dispel with similar threats the foul things he said.”

“Foul words we must all learn to live with sir, and to ignore, as needs be.”  
He nodded slowly.

“I ought to return to the child, sir.”

“Of course. When last I looked, it appeared that Tyrion was rather asleep, and she had taken over both recitation and his glass of brandy- ”  
She smiled and ducked her head to conceal a small laugh. He looked at her in delighted surprise, and returned with his own grin. Offering his arm, he said,  
“May I?”

Her laugh halted and her merry expression turned to one of disdain; “Certainly not sir, I am capable of _walking_ without aid.”

He raised his eyes to the heavens and sighed, falling in step beside her as they returned to the house.


	9. Circles

She was on the landing of the stairs, and his body was a column of sun-warmed stone. The gown was so thin, she could feel the heat of his chest, his hands, as he held her close and spoke urgent words just beneath her ear. His breath, his knee between her thighs, kindled an oily flame that burned down her spine, and lit between her legs. She reached down her hand to quell the awareness there, but it bloomed at her own touch, and with his voice graveled and insistent, now on her collarbone, now her mouth, she pressed and shifted and moved in rhythmic circles, and all the while he said triumphantly “Yes, yes,” as she sank into herself.

She was on her back, stretched out on the stairs, her long, pale body open like water to the moonlight, and she looked down to see him on his knees before her, her legs arched over his shoulders as he explored hungrily the strangest place of her. She moaned, and the louder she moaned, the faster he moved his lips, and moved in her like the sea, moved until she cried out and woke in her bed, to find that the moaning was not from her own throat, but from the room above. 

It was Jeyne Poole, or her shadowy prisoner, who keened lustily into the night. She grew still and tried to remember; had she herself spoken aloud? Had she uttered a name? Jeyne’s voice groaned on ecstatically, and Brienne could not escape the vision of her own nakedness, of the man on his knees. She slipped a trembling hand beneath her gown to find where she was wet, and could not take her fingers away; she wanted it again. She closed her eyes once more, and the throaty murmur, the yearning music from above coaxed her to move again in a circle, raising her hips into her touch, thinking again of dark hair, no, golden hair against her thigh, teeth on her shoulder, hands on her breast, as the moans through the ceiling rose and fell, until, shuddering and mounting, she was sluiced with ripe warmth, and quieted. 

She closed her legs and cleaned her fingers on her hem, feeling odd and ashamed. Her thoughts strangely went at once to the guests, to Mrs. Frey, to Loras Tyrell. How repulsive would they find her now, if they only knew her helpless nocturnal reverie. If he only knew...She breathed deeply. No one could know, she assured herself. They could not know her indecent thoughts just to look at her. She should only try to suppress the unnatural impulses, the vulgar thoughts when they arose, to resist the dreams entertained by her longing, sinful, traitorous body. 

In the kitchen that afternoon, she had overheard Pia recounting to Alyce all the things she did with her beau Peck when she visited him in town. All evening, Brienne had been unable to prevent herself from wondering absently, squeamishly, what kind of woman could enjoy such things? What man would entertain such foolish attitudes? And all evening, she had been unable to escape wondering (the question lingering around the corner of every innocent thought) how a man’s mouth could possibly feel. 

She began to recite lines of Tennyson, crisp and noble stanzas under her breath, and so lulled herself into eventual sleep.

“To dream  
That any of these would wrong thee, wrongs thyself.  
Witness their flowery welcome. Bound are they  
To speak no evil. Truly save for fears,  
My fears for thee, so rich a fellowship  
Would make me wholly blest: thou one of them,  
Be one indeed: consider them, and all  
Their bearing in their common bond of love,  
No more of hatred than in Heaven itself,  
No more of jealousy than in Paradise…”


	10. The Maegi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiiiiiii my lovelies, sorry this took so long. For those not familiar with Jane Eyre, this is my version of the infamous scene with the 'gypsy', which is often left out of filmed versions, as it's so damned difficult to stage. But it's one of my favourite elements, and I hope I've put it to good use here. Thanks as ever for your kind words and notes.

She turned to see him striding to catch up to her in the gallery, dressed for riding in pale breeches and a green morning coat, handsome as the dawn. 

“Gods, woman, but you do march about. It’s not a bloody military parade-”

“Might I assist you in something sir?” She interrupted primly as he matched her gait. He lowered his voice and turned his head to her to speak gently as they walked. 

“I merely wanted to inform you, first, that the offending guest has indeed departed, and you needn’t skulk about the old terrace any longer -”

“-I do not skulk, sir.”

“-You are most welcome. Second, that my brother will be unable to keep his appointment with Myrcella this morning. He has summoned me on some business this afternoon, that I expect shall carry late into the evening.”

Brienne spoke before she could prevent herself, “You do not ride out with Miss Tyrell then?” 

“No, thank the gods, I have a reprieve.”

She could not guess what had put her in so candid a turn, but she was powerless to halt the words escaping her; “How strange, sir, you seemed to favour her most of the company.”

He stopped up short. When she turned to look at him, a queer smile was playing upon his face.  
“You mark my activities each day, Brienne?”

Her gaze cast downward involuntarily, but, cursing herself, she forced it level again. 

“It is difficult not to, given Mrs. Frey’s penchant for recounting your every step,” she retorted.

“Do not demur! You watch me each evening, noting even to whom I speak?”

“Again sir, Mrs. Frey demands that I supply her with a full account of the evening, it would be cruelty itself to deprive her. On that point, you might allow her to attend, so that I might retire instead. Certainly she would consider it a great honour- ”

His close-lipped smile was devilish and his eyes were insistent.

“And what do you report so faithfully to Mrs. Frey?”

She opened her mouth to speak, and hesitated, considering another denial. Then she found herself replying without thinking, the words seeping from her slowly, as though she were realizing it even as she spoke:  
“I might tell her that you seem to be far away at times. That though you talk and laugh and sing, and perform the role of the good host, you do not truly see, or hear, or seem to care. You disappear into yourself, sir, as though you are all alone at sea, even in your own crowded drawing room.”

A look of dismay flickered into his face, overtaking the smile, but just as quickly, he recovered himself with a laugh, saying, “Little wonder I should disappear, considering the dull nonsense that seems to amuse the crowd. I do not doubt that you would find yourself, as I do, frequently contemplating means of self-slaughter or escape. I challenge you in fact this very evening; you will join them as usual after dinner and report on their activities to me, rather than to Mrs. Frey. You can act as a spy rather than a septa for once.”

“Of course, sir,” she replied stonily, turning from him. He trailed her in faintly uncomfortable silence to the library, where he collected Mr. Lannister, and departed abruptly. 

The evening salon was subdued without the two most compelling companions present. Misters Marbrand and Kettleblack were tall, gracious, inoffensive gentleman, and though Miss Merryweather and Miss Bulwer were content to drowsily exchange platitudes with them over cards, and Lady Hightower content to listen, Miss Tyrell sought a different occupation. She resisted the efforts of Miss Graceford and Miss Crane to draw her into conversation, and instead made her way to the casement where Brienne had perched. As she drew near, Brienne wryly remarked how curious it was that the young woman had been indifferent to her presence up until the evening that her chief amusement had been called away on business.

“Miss Tarth,” she cried, in her voice like dark satin, “what a pity you did not walk out with us this afternoon! We saw an Essosi encampment near Millcote, it was a most rousing excursion.”

“I am sorry I did not join you,” Brienne replied coolly. 

The smaller woman seemed to hesitate before speaking again, settling beside Brienne, and speaking in a dulcet, confidential tone.  
“I wanted to apologize to you, Miss Tarth, both for myself and for poor Loras. For myself I am sorry that I did not come to greet you sooner, that I have behaved as a stranger to you. In honesty, I must confess that seeing you..forgive me, reminds me of him. It brings back memories of days spent at Lowood that I find difficult to bear. May I be so bold as to imagine it might be the same for you?” 

Brienne hesitated, searching the dark eyes before her, but unable to find reflected there any insincerity, she replied,  
“I must admit that it was so. When I heard you would join us here, many long-since subdued and now painful memories came forward again.”

“I understand you entirely. You do not think me wicked for neglecting you?”

“No Miss, I was grateful at first for your distance. It provided me an opportunity to indulge my feelings, and to regain my composure.”

“And Loras - I understand he was cruel to you. I would beg of you not to condemn him too harshly. Renly was his dearest friend, and you know how poorly equipped men are to contain their heaviest emotions. Please forgive him! He was in so much pain. I have reprimanded him myself, and I should like to know he has your forgiveness?”

“Of course.”

“You are so good. You have always been so steadfast, so true. No wonder he relied upon you for so much. He admired your skill greatly, you know.”

Brienne’s face felt hot, and she bowed her head.

“Oh there, dear Miss Tarth, I did not mean to upset you. We ought to think on happier times, should we not? We who share in each other’s pain.”

“Of course. I should only like to know, Miss Tyrell - you do not...hold me responsible-”

Margaery gasped, and seized Brienne’s hand from her lap, her small, nimble fingers clasping Brienne’s broad palm, and looked into her face beseechingly.

“Oh! Miss Tarth, how could I? I know you would have protected him from anything were it in your power. Perhaps we shall never know the truth of who sent for him, but please be calmed to know that I hold you as innocent of that charge as I myself am.”

“I am relieved to hear it.”

Miss Tyrell flashed her radiant smile, retaining Brienne’s hand, and surveyed the room.  
“It is strange to be in the world once again, is it not? Having spent so long at home, wondering how to carry on. Now it seems life compels us to rejoin its current.” She turned to Brienne once more.  
“I hope you do not think ill of me, or find that it overshadows my love for Renly, that I am now pursuing my future happiness. If I were in your place, I should certainly think me a fool, putting myself in such a path. But I truly believe it will be for the best. He too seems - closed off, does he not?”

It took Brienne some moments to realize that she was speaking of Colonel Lannister. Her stomach turned unpleasantly, but she answered, “Yes, he has a guarded air.”

Miss Tyrell went on, “No doubt it comes from his years of scandal. I have no doubt it is all behind him, though. And they are one of the very best and oldest families. He should not remain closed up here in this old castle, he should come South, to King’s Landing. I can even see that he might stand for government. Can you not see him as a peer? As a privy councillor? And I a cabinet member’s wife?”

She giggled vivaciously. “I’m going outrageously beyond myself, I ought not talk of such things. But wouldn’t it be marvelous! Can’t you see it?”

At that moment, a footman sidled in the door of the parlour and approached the card table to speak to Marbrand and Kettleblack. They exchanged looks of amusement and surprise, and the ladies tittered.

“What goes on!” cried Miss Tyrell, loath to be left out. She drew Brienne to her feet beside her, slipped her slim arm beneath Brienne’s, and tugged her gently over to the assembly on the sofas.

“We have just been informed that an old Essosi mother, a maegi no less, has come to the kitchen door, and will not leave until she has told our fortunes,” chortled Marbrand.

“How droll!” Miss Tyrell exclaimed, “Have her brought into the little drawing room where the men have smoked. Mr. Marbrand, I believe you should go first! You will tell us if she is the genuine article, and if she will curse us or no.”

Mr. Marbrand interceded that the maegi had demanded to see only the single ladies present. At this, a general twittering and provoked fluttering arose from the young women, who at once began to confer about who would be the first to go. 

One by one, with glowing countenances, they went off to visit the maegi, and returned with even redder cheeks, refusing to tell one another what had been spoken. When it was Miss Tyrell’s turn, she released Brienne, instructed Mr. Kettleblack to amuse her (though he seemed less than keen to do so) and, flouncing all her lustrous plumage about her and gracing the party with a magnificent smile, she swept out. 

The gentlemen invited Brienne to their card game, and they had played nearly three hands by the time Miss Tyrell returned. Her expression was decidedly deflated. Lady Hightower fussed about her.  
“Margaery dear, what is the matter? Have you received some unpleasant prediction?”

Miss Tyrell only shook her head with a little smile, and settled down at the table to play at cards, keeping an unusual silence.

Brienne had once again recovered her book, and was lodged on the settee, when the footman again appeared at the door.

“Yes? What is it?” called Marbrand.

“Begging your pardon sir, but the old Mother insists that there is still one single lady who has not been to see her, and she will not leave until she has interviewed her.”

Miss Tyrell looked about, and her eyes seized on Brienne. “Miss Tarth, I believe she means you! You must go at once, or she will curse us all,” she said smiling kindly, shooing Brienne up from the her place and out of the room. 

She followed the footman down the hall to the door of little drawing room. Before opening it to usher her in, he turned and said,”I shall be just outside this door all the while, Miss, you needn’t fear..” It then seemed to occur to him that he was obliged to tilt his head upwards to look at her, and trailed off. Brienne quirked an eyebrow. 

“Thank you, Pod. That will be all.”

She opened the door and strode inside.

 

The room was dim, lit only by the fire in the hearth. Some essence or strange kindling had been laid upon it, and it burned with a dense smoke that crowded her vision and a fragrance that made her head ache and swim.

In the chair pulled up close beside the fire, swathed in robes and dark, heavy veils, sat the maegi. Strings of blood red beads and silver crescents nestled against the capacious bosom, glittering. Beneath the veils that shrouded the face gleamed two shining circles, like coins on the eyes of a corpse; a pair of darkly tinted spectacles. In the figure’s lap, amid the sea of full black skirts that overflowed the chair, were folded two hands in black gloves. 

A tall shadow moved in the darkness behind the chair and Brienne looked up alarmed. The maegi spoke in a voice like dry leaves rustling over cobblestones, with a strange accent;  
“Don’t worry child, it is only my simple daughter. She helps me from place to place.” The tall person, whom Brienne could scarcely see, dipped a small curtsey, before settling into another in the corner.

“Come, my dear, sit here where I can see you.”

Brienne obliged, and assumed the seat across from the old woman by the hearth.  
“Are you afraid, Brienne of Tarth?”

“No Madam, I am not. That you know my name is not sufficient to alarm me.”

“And do you believe in old magic from Asshai?”

“I fear I must disappoint you on that count, ma’am. I do not.” 

“Not superstitious then. And yet you want to hear your fortune?”

“I don’t much see the need for it, but I was told you would not be satisfied until you had seen each of us.”

“I could hear the impudence and the dissatisfaction in your step as you crossed the threshold.”

“You have a quick ear.”

“And the grief you carry. You are cold, and sad.”

“I am neither.”

“You are removed from all the rest, tucked in your corner with your reading, trying to escape the sight of others, trying to escape the sight of a certain gentleman and a certain young lady. You see, I know your habits.”

“You have learned it from the servants. What lady and what gentleman do I avoid?”

“You wish me to speak more plainly? Show me your palm.”

“And I must cross it with silver I suppose?”

She grunted her assent. One of the gloves in her lap turned upward, and Brienne dropped a coin into it, and extended her own open hand toward the maegi, who leaned forward and bent over it.

“What do you know of the Master here?”

“Know of him? As much as any in this house, I suppose.”

“Is that so? You do not know his secrets more...intimately than others?”

“I know little of his past or his present affairs.”

“He has confessed some matters to you, I see it in your palm. A scandal...and a murder. Did he tell you the whole?"

Brienne stiffened.

“He is no murderer.”

“So certain! And yet it was he himself who told you he was blameless in the matter. Did he speak truthfully?”

“Yes,” she replied firmly, with the blood mounting in her cheeks.

“The old Asshai witch before you tells you differently. My child, he is a man with dark and harmful secrets. Why do you resist?”

“I know there is honor in him. I’ve seen it myself. I know how heavily the censure of others weighs upon him, how he longs for redemption. He told me the truth about his dealings in the past, and though sordid, I know he acted in the way he thought was right. He betrayed his duty in order to fulfill a higher duty, to protect the lives of innocents. Because it haunts him, I know it is true.”

“Yet you once suspected him. What changed you towards him?”

“He - he has been kind to me. When he has had no cause to be, when he could merely have overlooked me, he has been kind, and he has shown me respect.”

“You scarcely look at him, nor the pretty lady with the dark hair and the sweet laugh who is near him often. It disturbs you that they are so much together.”

“Disturbs me? Nothing could be further from the truth. If I do not observe them, it is from disinterest.”

“You are so honest, Brienne of Tarth, and yet in this trivial matter you deceive yourself and dissemble even to me, who knows what is in your heart. Why?”

“I have heard enough of this. I came to have _my_ fortune told, not to talk about the Colonel or his guests.”

“So! You harbour some secret hope for me to please you with happy whispers of the future.”

“Not I. I have no wish for pleasant delusions. But if you have any art at all, perhaps you can tell me what lies ahead. I do not want flattery or promises of riches. The most I hope is to save enough from my wages to open a school of my own someday. To be my own master. Do you foresee any tragedy that will prevent me?”

The old maegi was silent for a moment. 

“You long for freedom, it is true.”

“I have told you as much myself, ma’am.”

“I see no insurmountable obstacle to this goal.”

“At last, a prediction.”

“Yet! I will tell you too that you are bound here in ways you do not admit. If you do not tend to what binds you here - you will find freedom and self-mastery no consolation.”

“The only thing that binds me here is my need for a living, for savings.”

“And I tell you that you are blind to your fetters. When you attempt to walk away, they will pull you asunder. Unless -”

Suddenly the figure in the corner of the room shot to its feet, and said, “Enough.”

Brienne shook her head, the perfumed smoke slowing her thoughts; the voice was not a woman’s, nor was the figure that of a maegi’s daughter. She knew that voice in her very bones. 

What was more, the maegi burst suddenly into a fit of laughter. “The play is played out!” This voice too was not the aged croak of the witch that she had heard before.

She looked on, horrified, as the maegi cast off her veil and gloves and stepped out of her skirt, and the other figure threw back its own robes. Mr Tyrion Lannister jumped from the chair to the ground before her and bowed deeply. In the corner, bearing a solemn, tentative smile, stood the Colonel himself.

“We have quite shocked her, brother!” crowed Mr Lannister, “I say, Miss Tarth, what did you think of our little pantomime? You mustn’t be cross with us, it was all in good fun. Would you care for some sherry?” His eyes sparkled mischievously. 

Brienne lips were firmly pressed in a line and she avoided the gaze of the Colonel.

“Forgive me, the smoke has -” she managed, “I must go. Goodnight.”

“Miss Tarth, wait -”

She turned on her heel and escaped the dim room out into the hall and strode along the passage toward the stair, wanting only to regain her chamber. The Colonel overtook her in several long strides, having cast off his lendings entirely.

“Brienne, stop,” he commanded, stepping into her path, “It was a foolish, unworthy prank of Mr Lannister’s design, to amuse the ladies, and - I did not mean for it to involve you. That is - I had no wish to embarrass you or entrap you.”

“It is no difference to me.”

“Then why do you flee?”

“Why would you play such a game? To try to provoke people into - what? Such confessions I cannot imagine.”

At this he grinned in spite of himself, and she narrowed her eyes.

“No, I don’t think you could imagine such commonplace desires,” He put on a mocking girlish voice, “‘Who will I marry, will my husband be wealthy, will he be handsome?’ It’s enough to make me ill.”

“If you have such disdain for them, sir, why keep them about you? If you do not wish to marry, why keep Miss Tyrell in thrall? You know what she seeks, and if you have a mind to acquiesce, why not proceed? Why engage in nonsense and chicanery? And moreover, if you persist in such foolishness, you might spare me from being caught up in your schemes.”

As she spoke, his expression hardened against her censure, and now he snarled in return;  
“Was it not you who told me I was cowardly to waste in the shadows? You who said I ought to move on, make the best of things, did you not? And so, here, I have rejoined society. I have brought myself back to my duty, back to the world. To make an alliance, to give the child some fitting life among so-called genteel people, I fraternize with these simple fools, I play their cards, I mouth their words. So I have done it. So you tell me, Miss Tarth, why am I not fulfilled? Why do I seem to you far away when I am among them? Tell me.”

She tensed against his combative vehemence, her jaw set and her brow furrowed. His searching glare bore heavily into her, his face inches from her. She scarcely breathed. 

“If all those people - Brienne, if all those foolish people knew what I really am, they would turn their backs on me. They have forgiven me one scandal. But if they knew the rest, they would desert me, disgrace me.”

Back again was the haunted look in his eyes, the rage and fear she had seen the night his bed had burned. 

“If those people deserted me, Brienne, what would you do? Would you too desert me?” 

“I would not.”

“If all these people spat at me and mocked me for some unforgivable thing of my doing, what would you do?”

“I would cast them out.”

“You would dare censure for my sake?”

“I would endure it for the sake of anyone who deserved adherence.”

“You said - you said I long for redemption.”

“I believe you do. Sir.”

“I think you are right. And I have tried many means of finding it, yet it evades me. But you at least - perhaps it is well that you should be as a septa in these walls. A blue-eyed septa giantess to keep me to the path…”

They stood silent for a few moments. From the hall behind them, Tyrion called, “Brother! We ought to stage our re-entry, the sherry in that room has run dry...” He still wore the dark spectacles of his costume.

The Colonel heaved a sigh, and Brienne smiled. 

“What did the maegi tell Miss Tyrell that put her in such a quiet and reflective humour?”

He adopted a sober countenance, with laughter in his voice. “I believe Miss Tyrell received otherworldly intelligence that the Lannister fortune is quite diminished, a handful of pennies really, and may not present her with the lucrative matrimonial opportunity she had anticipated.”

“Goodnight, sir.”

“Goodnight, Brienne.”

“Sweetest of dreams, Miss Tarth!” roared Tyrion. 

“Goodnight, Mr Lannister.”


	11. First Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait my loves! I hope it's worth it...

A scream tore through Casterly from end to end, and was answered with a returning cry, a tumbling heaviness, a scuffling across the floor above. Brienne scrambled from her bed and stood listening tensely in the darkness. The sounds of some violence being done just above her cleared her mind of any extraneous thought, and she threw on her housecoat and emerged into the hall. 

Already other doors were opening, and some of the ladies, Miss Tyrell included, were clustering in doorways, peering timidly about, gasping and chirruping to each other in alarm. Brienne remained half-hidden at the end of the hall. Whatever business was afoot, she felt certain that the Colonel would not want it known, though the noises continuing tousle from above put her fear that she would be too late to prevent whatever harm was being done. Marbrand appeared and marched to the Colonel’s bedroom door to knock, but the Colonel appeared on the stairs, descending from the upper story.

‘Ladies, friends, be composed, all of you. It was a servant who has had a nightmare and a fright. Please, be at rest. She has suffered a fit of nerves, and is sorry to have woken the ladies from their sleep.”

By equal turns coaxing and commanding, with a manner smooth and steady, he ushered the ruffled guests back into their rooms. When the doors all were closed, and the murmurs and movements behind them ceased, he strode purposefully and quietly in the direction of Brienne’s own chamber. 

She had taken the moments this afforded to dress quickly, and she stepped out silently to meet him. Seeing her, he registered some surprise at finding her already prepared for an errand, but gestured for her to draw near.  
‘Have you a sponge, a cloth in your room?’ he whispered, his mouth grim-set, but his eyes wide and anxious.

She wordlessly fetched both from her washstand, and he gestured for her to follow. He lead her up the stairs to the level above, and on the landing where he had so many weeks ago halted her heated pursuit, he again brought his hands to her arms to pause her progress.

“You won’t turn sick at the sight of blood?”

“Not at all.”

“It won’t do to risk a fainting fit.”

She merely narrowed her eyes at him.

“Stay a moment.” He turned and opened the door behind him, the door to the room above her own, that which had withstood her wonderings for many months, but which he closed on his heels before she could see more than a glimpse of what was contained therein. 

She heard his baritone remonstrances, and a grunting reply, the goblin laugh and growl of Jeyne Poole. Another door within was open and shut. Then he opened the door to her and ushered her inside. 

In the center of a large bed, its curtains drawn, and illuminated only by a single candle at the bedside, lay Mr. Lannister, pale as death. His breathing was labored and feeble, and his face contorted into a mask of pain, then relaxed as he passed in and out of consciousness. This state was due to a savage wound at the side of his neck, another on his arm, and some other she could not see. His entire shirt was red with his own blood, and his black jacket glistened wetly, and she knew that it too was soaked in gore. 

The Colonel put his hand to his brother’s cheek tenderly. “Tyrion. Tyrion, here is Miss Tarth. She will remain with you while I fetch the Maester." 

Turning to Brienne, who had already brought round a wash basin from the other side of the bed, and was wringing out the cloth in it, he said, “I will be gone an hour, two hours at most. Tyrion, in that time, you are not to speak to her, do you understand? Do not speak a word to her.”

Brienne looked at him in alarm, but he only took the cloth from her and gently passed it over the wounded man’s forehead. “Don’t you dare leave me, brother. Do not dare cross over. You will be safe in Brienne’s care until I return.”

He straightened, his expression hard, but his eyes full of fear and feeling. He dropped the cloth and took her hand in his and pressed it firmly.

“Whatever you do, do not let anyone through that door.” He looked across the room and she followed his glance to a small door half hidden behind a drawn tapestry, tied with a cord. 

“Go, sir. I will hold it fast. Hurry now,” and she boldly pressed his hand in return. His lips parted as if he would say something more, but he merely nodded and abruptly swept from the room. 

 

She settled down at Tyrion’s bedside to wait, and wonder at what horror had attacked him. Could it really have been Jeyne Poole? Was she capable of such savagery? Tyrion’s lips were blue, his cheek ghastly white. He did not speak, but his eyes opened from time to time, wide in terror, roving about the dark shadows of the room, and over her own face, before collapsing once more under the weight of his pain. 

Again and again, she passed the cloth over his brow, pressed it into the water, wrung it out, and applied it again. 

Once, her wounded charge seemed to rouse to lucid consciousness, though he yet spoke no words. He only met her eyes and stared at her intently as he managed to lift his arm from where it lay half hidden in a fold of his jacket. He seemed to implore her with his gaze, begging her to comprehend; he slowly and in agony twisted his wrist so that his fist lay face up on the coverlet. Tremblingly, his fingers opened. His small palm was moist, and bore a line of crescent indents where his nails had pressed into his own flesh. 

But there, clinging to his fingers, was stuck a small quantity of long blonde hairs, a series of strands as if torn from the head of a woman. Open mouthed and puzzled, she gently shook her head, to indicate that she did not understand. Tyrion exhaled heavily, and shut his eyes, and though his strained breathing continued, he did not open them again. 

 

She had little idea how much time had passed. Her only companion was the small candle, which she watched so closely, it was hard to recognize how much it had burned. 

Some time into her vigil, perhaps an hour, perhaps two, she heard a muffled tread somewhere behind her, as though in a hollow place beyond the wall. She rose, and moved in silence toward the half-hidden door indicated by the Colonel. Only the smallest noise, a tiny clicking and sliding, far off, but echoing nonetheless, indicating the presence of some creature in the bowels of the house. 

There was a small, sudden, wet slap on the floor behind her; the cloth had slid off the bed where she had left it. 

The noises ceased abruptly; it was listening for her. 

Then there was footfall, gathering noise and speed, surging through its unseen passage toward her, toward the door. Brienne lunged for it just as the creature landed on the other side, snarling and pushing. Brienne threw her back against the wood and braced with her legs. 

The door rattled in the struggle, and its dark seam showed; if this was Jeyne Poole, that tiny girl, that frail shadow Brienne had once chased up to this very room, how could she be so foreceful? Whatever primeval malady or demonic possession that made her grunt and cackle and moan must also bestow upon her a beastly strength. 

A sudden, instinctive assuredness overcame her, a feeling that swelled and deepened the harder she pushed; she was the contender with the advantage of size, she could conquer this shadowy challenger. With grim resolve, she anchored herself in place, determined not to give an inch to the slavering fiend. Sure enough, with her full force levied against it, the assailant could gain no purchase. The door no longer budged or rattled. The stranger began to pause and hurl herself at the door, but Brienne braced against each onslaught, and no more did the door open. Eventually she heard it retreat, dragging itself down the passage, perhaps to rest, perhaps to wait. She remained with her back to the door nonetheless. 

Another set of footsteps in the main corridor made her start, but it was only the Colonel returning with the Maester. 

He looked about the room wild-eyed until he saw her, then rushed to where she leaned, his gaze questioning intently. She shook her head briefly, and slowly came away, as if to say - the danger has passed. The Maester was at Tyrion’s bedside, unpacking a case. Brienne and the Colonel stationed themselves at the foot of the bed, in case they should be wanted. 

When Tyrion’s shirt was open, and he began to whimper as the Maester dressed his wounds, the Colonel hand, which had been clenched at his side, reached out blindly to grasp Brienne’s. The grotesque vision before her before her made her glad to hold tightly to something true and reassuring.

When the patient was treated and dressed, the Colonel released her hand, which felt strangely cool and bereft once that weight had been removed, and he gathered his brother in his arms. 

“The carriage is waiting,” he said quietly. “Brienne, would you go to his chamber and collect his effects. He will not forgive you or I if we do not send him with his books.”

“But where is he to go?”

“There is a family lodge not far from here. Well-appointed. He will be well-cared-for, and not far from me.”

“He cannot-” she began to question, but the Colonel lifted his eyes to her helplessly, and she recognized in his expression the fear of discovery, the guarding of the enigmatic secret of Jeyne Poole that burdened him, from which he would not - or could not - release himself. She nodded, and went without another word.

 

The pale, crepuscular blue of approaching dawn gauzed over the courtyard where they met the carriage. Tyrion had been settled in, and was to be accompanied by the Maester to the Lannister’s lodge. The Colonel had leaned in to press his lips to his brother’s forehead, murmuring reassurances. 

As the carriage pulled away, he turned on his heel and began to march in the direction of the gardens. 

“Will you join me?” He asked, making an effort to keep the shade of desperation from his voice.  
She followed. They walked in silence for some paces, his face resolved in a frown and directed firmly at the unoffending ground. 

“What, no questions?” he growled.

She did not reply, merely regarded him warily, clutching her shawl about her shoulders, thankful that she had had time to properly dress.

“Go ahead, chastise me again for my recklessness.” 

“You know I think it reckless sir, but I cannot blame you for fulfilling what you believe to be your duty.”

“And how could you know what I consider to be my duty?”

“You would not do it otherwise.”

He halted, still staring at the ground. They had walked along the lower tier of the terrace, shielded from the view of the windows of the house by an enclosing wall, and had now come upon a break in the partition through which a staircase extended. With a softer voice, he said,  
“Your unflagging belief in my goodness is exhausting, you must know. It is more than I deserve.” 

“I have withstood whatever monster you keep, though she has a mighty strength. Do you not think I could be of more use to you standing guard? To keep her contained?”

“You are no simpleton, my lady, do not offer foolish advice. I could no more put you in the path of harm than I could the child.”

“I am in more danger of coming to harm if I do not know what threat we face-”

They heard a door swing open, bang and shudder; one of the servants entering to the kitchen. In an instant he had his hand hooked about her high waist, and had pulled her back into concealment behind the sheltering wall. His hands anchored her instinctively against the stone as he leaned past her to peer out around the side, his chest so close she could feel each beat of his heart. 

She moved to free herself, but froze when he returned his gaze to her and seemed himself to realize how intimately aligned his body was to hers. Yet he did not move away.

He was so close, so unbearably close. And most curious of all, he was looking fixedly at her mouth, as though mesmerized, his beautiful lashes lowered.  
A chilling fire, a weightlessness, a starriness trilled through her blood and she could not think. 

He frowned, strangely, “You are cold.”

“No.”

“Then why do you tremble so?” he whispered, in a voice nearly breaking.

“Sir -”

Suddenly enclosing her face in his palms, he kissed her fiercely, urgently, as though with his lips he sought both to crush her into the stone and to beg for her mercy. 

For that moment she was still, blinded by the light that now shone over the world, arresting all else in its path as she alone drifted, gently burning in a stream of flame. Then she fell to earth, and closed her shaking fingers over his wrists and pulled them down from her face. She lurched away from him as though struck, and pressed the back of her hand to her lips, incredulous. 

“Brienne-” she heard him say hoarsely, and he reached for her, but she snatched herself away.

She could not possibly meet his eye; a look of revulsion or regret or penitence or horror there would surely break her into a thousand dying pieces. She could not bear it. She walked briskly away, back the way they had come, pulling the shawl tightly about herself. 

Did he call her name again? Did he still stand there where she had left him, facing the wall where her body had been between his hands? She dared not pause or look back. 

Only once in the archway of the courtyard did she stop, pressing her hands to her heaving ribs, as though she might hold herself together. She thought of the long golden hairs clutched in Tyrion’s palm, and knew with terrible certainty they could not belong to Jeyne Poole. Then whose?


	12. Winnings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Short & angsty.

“Miss Tarth!” Miss Tyrell shouted gaily from the billiards table, “Come, join us in a game or two!”

“I am afraid I cannot, I want only a word with the Colonel.”

He had placed down his cue the moment he saw her in the doorway, and now cut his way past the Misses Graceford and Crane to meet her.  
They moved into the hallway, and he drew the door gently closed behind him. 

Though she had rehearsed the moment many times, she struggled now that he was before her to embark in the brisk, buoyant tone she required. 

For all the hours in between, she had wondered furiously what his thoughts had been in that moment, or if he had had any at all. The voice of harsh self-censure berated her ceaselessly, reminding her it was only his hasty mistake, that his lips had no sooner left hers than he had regretted it. Yet even knowing this, she had been unable to rid herself of the feeling of his lips, his supplicating hands, had so often thought of it that she had begun to think it only a dream. And here he was, a god made flesh, regarding her with his old amused manner. 

“You have avoided me.”

“I have been busy, Sir.”

“Brienne, if you would let me explain -”

“There is no need to explain, Sir, I understand entirely and have no wish to trouble you.” 

He regarded her with a gentle smile.“But you _do_ trouble me, Brienne, that is precisely the difficulty.”

So it was as she had feared. The cool, killing fingers of mortification slipped into her belly and wrenched at her, as she grasped for the only thing he could mean: for one heated moment, he had forgotten himself, shamed himself, and now the very sight of her repelled him. 

“I have no wish to do so, I will seek a new situation directly. What is more, I have come today to ask leave of absence for a week, perhaps two, for an errand of a personal nature. I will be gone at once, and you need never see me again.”

“What are you talking of? Why must you go? Where?”

“Stannis Baratheon is dying. He would see me, before the Stranger takes him. His message arrived only an hour ago.”

“Stannis - but why? What has Baratheon to do with you? And what is this talk of you seeking a new situation?”

“I would rather seek a new position than remain only to disturb you sir, or have my presence remind you of -”

His face darkened. “Remind me of what?”

She made no answer. 

“Remind me of what, Brienne?” He asked roughly. Her cheeks burned as she returned his frown in defiance. Would he humiliate her further, asking her to name that moment of greatest shame? 

“Of yesterday? That morning, my lady, I would not forget for all my life. I am sorry if I startled you, if I have impugned your honor. I should perhaps have made myself known in a more genteel fashion. But-”

He closed the space between them with a small step, and he gathered in his hands two fistfuls of her skirt.

“Forgive me, but my head is full of fire, when you are near me as you are now.” 

He bent his forehead to hers. Unbidden, a wave of desire curled over within her, flooding even to her fingertips, which remained clenched at her sides. His voice was the color of smoke, calling forth her basest instincts, which lay untouched outside of her bed. 

But the ruddy voice of self-censure thundered in her head, insisting _‘you are not worthy, there is some trick.’_ A new explanation for his behavior, for his nearness, dawned on her with a painful chill. Incredulous and triumphant, the censorious voice deafened all the heated clamor, and spoke for her as she pulled herself from his grasp:

“You cannot mock me, nor degrade me with your indecency. I am no cheap thing for your purchase or pleasure. I know what I am, sir, I know that I am ugly, that I am but plain, and poor. But I had thought - I had thought that we understood each other, as equals. As - friends perhaps.”

“We are, Brienne, we are.”

“And yet you attempt to - to make use of me, as if I am no better than a whore in a tavern.”

“Brienne, no -”

“You think that because of my face, my figure, you can do as you please?”

He fell silent, and withdrew his hands to his sides. A pall cast itself over his features, and he recovered himself coolly.

“Nothing could be further from the truth, Miss Tarth. I hope you will see that, if not today, perhaps another day. Now, I recall that you have had no wages, and you will need them for your journey, I take it.”

He drew a pocket book from his jacket and neatly unfolded two notes. 

“Here is what I have in cash from my billiards winnings.” He proffered it to her, and she took it lightly. “That is twenty. It should be more than sufficient to get you to the Stormlands and back.”

“I am owed twice this.”

“And yet,” he shrugged, returning the pocket book to its place, “it is all I have in ready cash. You will simply have to return to Casterly for the rest. Good day, Miss Tarth.”  
He turned on his heel, flung open the door of the billiards room, and was gone.


	13. Confessions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends! All apologies for the delay between posts! This was a surprisingly tricky chapter to get a handle on (still not entirely satisfied with it, but up it goes.) As I'm sure many of you know, life also tends to get in the way. But it's so very nice to be back here.  
> Despite appearances, I'm really focused on seeing this work through, not least because I've been ruminating on a new long-form J/B fic that I'm dying to write....so, onward til the end! 
> 
> Thanks as always for the kudos and comments and love - it really does keep me going :)

The coach had been unbearably hot, and so she had decided to walk, grasping her case back from the porter, assuring him that she could very well carry it on her own. The sun beat upon the back of her neck, and warmed the dark fabric of her dress, but it was preferable to the airless compartment and endless jostling.  
She came now to the top of the hill, where she had stood not five months before, on the day the Colonel had first arrived. There was Casterly, blazing in the midday sun, with the blue sea beyond, clouds scudding above, and the verdant grounds singing their rites of summer. It had been some weeks since she had seen it last, stern and strange, now dear for what it contained. 

She pushed her bonnet back from her head to fall upon her back, savouring the breeze through the damp hair at her temple. She dared even to undo the small buttons at her throat before continuing along the path toward the Rock. She knew that were Mrs. Frey to see her now, bare-headed in the sun, her throat exposed, she would have incurred a flurry of fussy admonishments, and this thought pleased her, and made her eager to see the old woman. She desired nothing more than to spend a quiet evening between her two erstwhile companions, talking, reading, taking delight in their steadiness, their affection. What a cure it would be to have Myrcella’s tiny arms thrown around her neck once more! Her spirit had spent a fraught fortnight wrestling with conflicting passions, revelations, and contemplation of the future, leaving her to crave such simple respite. 

 

At Storm’s End, she had been received by the Lady Baratheon, a timid, greyish woman with frightened fanatical eyes, and another lady, perhaps younger, though it was difficult to tell, who was beautiful beyond all measure, and clothed all in a shocking scarlet. 

“He has spoken of you,” said Lady Baratheon coldly. 

“It is good of you to come, child,” said the woman in red, “Your audience will allow his great soul to pass to the Lord of Light in peace and glory.”

No one had seen fit to introduce this lady to her, and she was left to speculate as to her name and her role in the house. Though solemn, it was a strange household to be sure. The woman in the red gown seemed to pass in and out of Lord Baratheon’s chambers with a freedom not afforded even the Lady Baratheon.

Stannis was not well enough to be seen until the second day. She spent a restless night in a small but well-appointed room, wondering whether the Colonel stayed up late to watch his fire, whether he spared her any thought, or whether Margaery Tyrell was still there to amuse him.

At last, following a thoroughly uncomfortable morning sitting in silence with the lady of the house, and being observed by the lady in crimson, she had been brought into the airless room where Stannis Baratheon was imminently to breathe his last. To her surprise, the lady in scarlet was the one to lead her in, and settled on the other side of the bed.  
She had still been a child when she last saw him; the grey, stocky figure whom she had invested with all the hate in her young heart, with each degradation or loss she suffered, each time she was struck, each time she was deprived of her supper in punishment for her willfulness. On his tours of the school, he had singled her out for contradiction, humiliation, as though he were determined to grind out the spark of defiance he saw in her; she had only learned to hide it, and harbour it closely. He bore some resemblance to Renly, though only superficially. Where Renly had been warm and invigorated, the elder Baratheon was a joyless, merciless tyrant, cold and immutable. It was strange then to see him so diminished. They had propped him slightly on a bastion of pillows, and his face, with eyes clenched tight, was like a mask carved from rotting wood, grey and heavily lined, ossified and lifeless. Then with a groan he opened his eyes. 

“Is that Miss Tarth?” He rasped, “I might as well get it over. The Lord of Light comes to claim me. Fetch that letter from my case there. Read it out.”  
She had done as he asked, reading it hastily and silently. 

_“Lord Baratheon, I write to you to discover the whereabouts of my brother’s child, who was enrolled at your school and placed in your care after her father’s death. Though my brother’s affairs in the colonies were unfortunate in their yields, my own were blessed enough that I have secured some competency. As I am a man lately of the Night’s Watch however, and can have no need for worldly things, I seek to find that child Brienne of Tarth, that I might adopt her as heir, and my own daughter…”_

It was dated one year past. The let the letter fall to her lap without continuing, and stared at it open mouthed.  
“How can it be that you have not told me of this at some earlier juncture, sir?” She asked slowly, when she had recovered.

“I have had a great many other things to occupy me, girl. The state of your fortunes has been of little consequence to me.” He collapsed into a fit of coughing. 

“Then why have you called me, my Lord, if I am of so little consequence to you? When you might have seen fit only to send word, and then again by some earlier date. Why bring me here?”

The red lady leaned closer to the bedside and folded her long fingers over Baratheon’s hand, where it lay clenched in the sheets.  
“It is time, my Lord, the Red God expects you to own your actions before you cross his threshold in honour and the glory that is due to you.”

Lord Baratheon grimaced. “I kept it from you out of spite. You were a stubborn, grotesque child, and I saw no reason why the Lord should reward your sinful nature with sudden fortune. But the Lady Melisandre has shown me that He has plans for us that we cannot comprehend, and that I must make amends by revealing the truth to you. In this spirit, I have another matter to confess. It concerns my brother, whom you knew. Nothing can be proven of course, as I took pains to root out and destroy the evidence of my direction. You understand that if you attempt to make known this event, you will be decried as a fool and a liar. My family will not be dispossessed for the actions I have seen fit to take.”

Brienne had seethed in silence, her face an undisguised scowl of perfect loathing. Even then, as he confessed to a hideous crime before his god, his contemptible arrogance and entitlement knew no bounds or shame:  
“I am a god-fearing man, Miss Tarth, and I am proud to have done what the Lord of Light commanded. My brother was a frivolous, selfish fool, whose sinful habits were an affront to god. When the red priestess told me what was required, I did not shrink to do it. My brother had never had the red fever in his youth, and was therefore vulnerable to the disease. When Lowood school succumbed, I wrote to him and told him he was required urgently, saying nothing of what he was to find. I summoned him knowing he was likely to fall, and fall he did. By the laws of man, I am a criminal, but in the eyes of the Lord of Light, I am his servant. Now, having given my confession,” he looked to the woman at his side, who was staring at him in a kind of rapture, “I will pass in peace to his kingdom.”

Brienne shuddered still to think of the look of absolute conviction that had inscribed his features, how convinced of his righteousness he was. It had required all her strength of will not wrap her fingers around his neck and choke from him what little life he had left. 

She wept bitterly for Renly, as though the wound was fresh. It seemed such a little thing; over the years she had imagined the summons came almost as a coincidence, as a simple mistake. He might even have come of his own accord. To know for certain the murderous, malingering intent, the terrible determination that engineered his journey to his death - this encompassed a cruelty and a depravity beyond her imagining. She was powerless to exact her retribution. She had left the house immediately, that stale gallery inhabited by the diabolical red woman, his husk of a wife, and spent the day in travel, staring from the window, imagining how she ought to have avenged Renly’s memory. The following day, news reached her at a nearby inn that Stannis was dead. Were she a knight, were she a warrior of old, she might have been the one to strike the killing blow herself. She could only content herself by ordering a second tea cake in celebration, eating it with bitter gusto.

Yet enjoining this painful reckoning, there was now a beacon in the darkness: In spite of all she had been taught, she was not the last remaining Tarth. Even now, her father’s brother was alive, and seeking her, wishing her well, with much to tell her about her family. She had written to him almost at once, informing him of her existence, her situation, her gladness at having found another member of her tribe. She envisioned a long correspondence extending down the years. She might even journey to Castle Black to visit him, as the old rules were not as strict as once they were, and the men of the Watch were permitted some indulgences. 

 

She passed under the gate at the foot of the hill, and over the lawn toward the house. As she came up the path, and the footbridge came into view, she saw a man lying on the grassy bank. He was stretched out on his back in shirtsleeves and a pale waistcoat, a hat over his face, and his arms behind his head. His boots and stockings had been discarded beside him, along with his coat. One leg was crossed upon his upright knee, so that one bare, tawny foot dangled in the air; like a god reclined in simple magnificence, heedless of his kingdom.

Her belly, her heart swept up, weightless within her, and she felt as though she would leave the ground. She was hot, and she could feel her cheeks burning with exertion, excitement, her forehead damp. She could not face him now. She ought to creep past, and she would face him later that evening, by the kind firelight, with cooler palms and a calmer head. She had not expected him. 

 

In her absence she had had word from Mrs. Frey; the party at Casterly was dispersed, and the Colonel had ridden out for Highgarden, it was supposed, to make arrangements for a certain future event with the Tyrells. She had not thought it possible, and had thought him, from his teasing, truly indifferent to Margaery Tyrell, but perhaps this was merely a fiction she had willingly extrapolated. After all, had not the signs of their attachment had been present and visible to all from the start? In consequence of this news, she had spent these many nights not only in mourning for Renly, not only rejoicing for her good fortune in a newfound uncle, but also fearing for her future at the Rock. When he brought his bride back to the house, what place would there be for her? She shook her head to dispel this line of despairing thought, and averted her eyes from his lithe form, supine on the bank.

 

She moved as silently as she was able over the grass, holding her skirts aloft in one hand, making her way slowly to prevent their rustling. She had reached the middle of the footbridge when she heard him call: “Brienne?”

Unbidden, her heart opened at the sound of his voice, and sweet warmth reached through all her veins. She turned to see that he had leapt to his feet, and now approached her, shaking his hair from his eyes. His boots were in his hand like a common stable boy, his eyes all astar with youthful glee, but his stalwart jaw was as if carved from marble, and she felt the full weight of his heavenly, incandescent beauty once more.

“Miss Tarth. Good of you to return to your post.”

“I would not fail in that, sir.” 

“Were you accosted by some vagrants on your way?” She gave a puzzled look and he walked up the bridge toward her, “Only that your hair, your -” He gestured with a sly smile to her exposed throat, her discarded bonnet. She brought a hand to the open collar automatically, her expression falling in dismay. 

“No, no, please. Not on my account. More than ever you look like one of your enchanted people, wild from a fairy dance.”

“Still,” she said, placing down her case, “it would not do to let Myrcella witness such an abdication of propriety.” She straightened and occupied herself with the buttons. 

“On the contrary, I believe that such abdications, as you call them, are precisely the root of her attachment. Neither Mrs. Frey or myself have been considered adequate comrades in your absence you know, for Mrs. Frey refuses to play at swords, and I myself have been deemed too silly.”

She could not help but laugh at the image conjured by this description. He grinned wider still, and moved to lean at the rail beside her. His sudden proximity sobered her. She was visited by visions of each time he had drawn near her; his hands in her skirt, on her waist. She was possessed with terrible longing to feel his nearness, and knew that for her’s heart’s sake, she must remind him of the true gulf between them:  
“I trust your journey to Highgarden was a productive one. Are we to expect many changes at Casterly soon?”

She placed both her hands on the rail and stared down into the water. He scrutinized her face closely, and she settled on a look of indifferent defiance as her best defence against the despair that consumed her from within - if she was to face this new tormenting prospect, let her face it with dignity. Having assessed her, he too turned and stared down at the stream below. 

“Indeed there will be; I intend to knock it all down and begin afresh. I hope you aren’t averse to sleeping in tents like an Essosi, it may take some years before the rebuilding is complete.” She ignored his jest. 

“Well, if there is truth in what Mrs. Frey has related, I am glad for you. You had thought yourself indifferent to the society of the Tyrells, but I congratulate you on having determined to join the fray. Not to keep yourself apart and alone any longer. Miss Tyrell is a fine lady, I am certain she will..” her voice trailed, and she dared not look at him, for she did not trust herself, “-and I shall be ready to go whenever you give word, only give me notice that I may seek a new situation. ” 

“Are you so determined to leave me?” He said quietly.

“I imagine Miss Tyrell will want to send Myrcella away to school, there will be no place for me.”

“Brienne, is that all? I have not offended you in some way? My...hasty actions, the burden of my secrets have not wearied you?”

“I am proud to bear your confidences. Proud to be...to have been..of service to you.” 

Summoning all her might, she glanced up at him then, and he at her. For a long while they merely held each other’s gaze. She wanted only to remain near him, but could think of nothing more to say, nor anything to do. Why did his face hold such sorrow? Could his thoughts bear any resemblance to her own? For those moments, she allowed herself to be as free to hope as she had ever been before, and the harsh voices of doubt were quieted as she thought only of how he continued to look, to hold her there, to want her in his sight. 

“We shouldn’t talk of such things,” he said tersely, picking up her case, “You must tell me instead whether Stannis Baratheon died the painful death we all wished upon him.”

He turned and began to walk back to the house, barefoot as he was, and, once she had recovered from her momentary confusion at his abrupt change, she followed. Their pace was leisurely as she related her strange adventure, and she was glad not only of a pair of sympathetic ears, but also of the distraction from the sense of the impending separation. If these were to be their final days together, she resolved, she would not spend them in agony, but rather in preserving the image of him she would carry for the rest of her days.


	14. A Duel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SPOT THE HEAVILY PLAGIARIZED LINE FROM JANE EYRE. Can’t help it, it’s my favorite, and IT’S SO PERFECT FOR THEM.

There came a number of days in which the sun did not fail, never hid its face, nor countenanced rain. The air was mild, indulgent, and tranquil; the hay was got in from the fields, and Myrcella and Brienne picked strawberries in the lane.

Having eaten twice as many berries as landed in her basket, and having spent the better part of the afternoon challenging Mademoiselle to duels to avoid her lessons, the weary child was asleep before the sun fell. Brienne slipped out of the house in the gathering twilight and made her way down to the courtyard to search for the toy swords which had been discarded in the grass she knew not where. She traversed the terrace at a leisurely pace, her eyes now on the ground as she attempted to recall where battle had been abandoned, now on the stars appearing one by one in the deepening sky. 

She had reached the orchard when she caught the sweet, noxious scent of cigar smoke, and saw a blue haze billowing out from a bench half hidden by a hedge.  
“Who goes there?” drawled that most familiar voice, as a long hand stretched forth to flick ash to the flagstone.

“You know well who it is, sir.” She approached. “Have you seen -”

“These weapons of war?” 

The two swords lay on the bench beside him, and he picked one up and grinned, squinting down the length at her. “A cunning blade. I expect your young pupil will be ready to enlist any day now. Unless-” he rose, “unless the dancing master I have secured for her is wanting.”

He discarded his cigar, and tossed the toy from hand to hand, looking up at her every so often to ensure he still enjoyed the cool favour of her bemused smile and raised eyebrow.  
“Would you do me the honour?”

He tossed it lightly to her and she caught it easily. “I think it not necessary to remind you sir that I have had no formal teaching myself.”

“Well, let it be a lesson then.” He snatched up the other toy from the bench and took a draught from the glass of brandy which lay alongside, then offered it to her. Feeling bold, she stepped forward and took it from him, meeting his eyes as she brought it to her lips, savouring the look of delighted surprise she saw there.  
“Enough stalling,” he cried, and made his way to a clearing between the apple trees. 

“Place your feet just so.”

“I know how to place my feet.”

“I must beg your pardon, my lady, but - not well, it would seem”

She merely raised her blade in reply. He smiled and leveled his own weapon at her, eyes sparkling. For a moment there was silence but for the night birds in the trees about them. 

He began gently the pattern of mannered attack to which she was accustomed, and she slowly met and returned each blow, their wooden blades scarcely touching, their movements and arch and exaggerated. 

“Very good, my lady” he said, when they had concluded the sequence, “Again, a little faster now.” 

They repeated the dance several times, each more swiftly than the last. In her excitement, her parry carried more force than necessary, and in answer, his blows and lunges became heavier. She greeted this gladly, the increased pace, the heightened focus; he had stopped his purring taunts and he was forced to concentrate. They had carried themselves out of sequence, and for a few breathless moments battled purely spontaneously, thrillingly beyond the confines of the drill, a genuine contest, before he lightly knocked her sword from her hand. She flushed when she became aware that she had been grunting with each effort to parry his thrusts, that her brow was slick with a thin sheen of sweat, that her cheeks burned, while he looked as imperturbable, as undisturbed as if he had just emerged from dinner. 

“What a fearsome warrior you are, beneath all that cold sobriety, Brienne, I think I detected not a little blood lust in your look.”

She merely passed a hand across her forehead and bent to retrieve the wooden sword, trying valiantly to still her heavy breathing, longing to begin again. He continued;

“Tell me my lady, what is it about the knights of old that you find so appealing?”

“I suppose I have always envied their purpose. They had duty and charges, and were respected for protecting the innocent. I have found that there are few remaining in our modern age who observe such antiquated morals; the defenseless, the weak, are all at the mercy of convention, religious fanaticism, and industry. There was no champion for me as a child, nor any of the poor souls with whom I shared my younger years.”

He was looking at her with an unbearable softness, with the intensity that made her wish for him never to stop. She averted her eyes.

-”Which is why my way in the world will be to create a safe haven for unfortunate children - a school of my very own, where I can protect those who need it most. Gods willing, in some years I will have enough capital to put up a small school house of my own - perhaps I may find some benefactor for my scheme. Or perhaps I may find my new situation at a school like Lowood, desperately in need of reform.”

“Ah yes, the infamous _new situation_.” His voice grew flinty at this word, “Well, if you wish to go, I will not keep you. You feel your path compels you elsewhere, and I would fain stand between a woman and her duty,” and he brushed past her to return to the bench, and took up his glass of brandy once more.

“I do wish to go - and...and I do not,” she said suddenly, and he turned around at once to face her with a look of astonishment. “I - I mean that, I feel my duty yes, and I desire nothing more than to make my own way freely in the world, but - I have felt...at home here, with-with all of you, and..it will...To go would…” She shook the sword in frustration as words failed her and her cheeks burned, and now it was her turn to stalk past him, seeking the safe harbour of the stone bench. “But, of course, I can’t imagine I will be of much use here any longer, not once the blessed event has taken place.”

He laughed bitterly. “Brienne, I have no intention of marrying Miss Tyrell. Yes, for a time, I entertained the notion that such an alliance would be advantageous, would compel me to leave behind this - this stupor to which I succumbed. And while I had thought there might be - a different sort who would - find companionship by my side, I was lately disabused of that notion, and so I returned to the idea of settling down with the insipid Miss Tyrell. But again, visiting at Highgarden, seeing again her trepidation at the revelations of the Maegi, I saw her for the callow, brittle bird she is. Calculating, clever, but no friend to me. So I have abandoned the notion finally. If Mrs. Frey and her like see fit to gossip about it, well-” he drained his glass - “who am I to deprive them.” 

She sat still in amazement, scarcely trusting herself to breath, let alone speak, lest it betray the aching sweetness of relief that flooded her, that seemed to brim in her eyes uncontrollably. 

“But I wonder if you still need to be free of me - if you will still go, even if there is no Margaery Tyrell to usurp your place. If my actions, my darkness, the secrets of this place have turned you away at last, in spite of what you say.”

If he waited for an answer, it did not come. The words with which she longed to answer were stopped up in her throat; if she released them, they would destroy the spell that now ensnared her. Now in a hoarse voice, barely above a whisper, as if he were speaking for himself alone, he went on:

“Sometimes I have the strangest feeling in regard to you - especially when you are near me, as you are now: it is as if I had a string tied here under my left rib where my heart is, tightly knotted in a similar fashion to you. And if you were to leave - if too many miles of land or sea were to come between us, I fear that cord would be snapped, and I would bleed inwardly.”

She felt as though she would be torn apart by the unspeakable truth of her heart that struggled to make itself known, that if escaped would put him further from her than ever. She leapt to her feet and turned from him, tears streaming unchecked down her face, as she moaned helplessly, insensibly;  
“I wish I had never come here, I wish I had never been born -”

“Brienne-”

“I wish I had never come because I cannot now wish to leave, and yet I must, I must.”

“Why must you leave?”

“I cannot stay only to become nothing to you- or to be a passing amusement -I -”

He stood before her now, and seized her two hands in his own.

“How could you ever be nothing to me, Brienne? Brienne, my own. Brienne whom I love as I have never loved another -”

“How dare you,” she cried, and freed herself violently again. But this time he caught her again, and held her fast, his hands at her throat, his thumbs brushing at her falling tears as he stumbled hopelessly on over his words.

“Please, Brienne, please, you must - you must know that I love you. You must know it by now- you must believe me- I am lost without you.”

“Don’t say such things, how can you be so cruel-”

“I love you, Brienne, and I beg you to stay, stay with me and be my wife. Look at me - look at me.”  
His eyes were themselves brimming with unshed tears, with his burning conviction.

“Look me in the eyes. Am I not your friend? You once said you trusted me -”

“How can I trust you now? When you say such ridiculous things.”

“Because you feel as I do, I know it. Tell me you don’t love me - tell me you don’t want to be here with me - with Myrcella.”

He regarded her with a terrible fear that broke in sharp, sweeping relief when he saw she could not speak the words.

“Brienne forgive me, forgive me for taking so long to know my own heart, for not making myself known to you slowly, gaining your acceptance with each step. But I will not hide the truth from you, not now that I know it myself. Take me as your husband, and let me be whole again. I am no good man except in your eyes, and that is where I wish to be.”

“But you are - you are a good man, you idiot”

He broke out into joyful laughter.  
“Stubborn woman, never to let me forget myself, even as I offer her my hand.” 

He curled his fingers in her hair, brushing it back from her face, and leaned his forehead to hers. She had not stopped weeping. 

“Say my name Brienne, let me hear it, please.”

“Jaime,” she breathed, discovering the sweetness of the sound on her tongue, “Jaime…”

His lips closed upon hers. If it were only a dream, if it were all to be lost to her after this moment, and she were to awake alone in a cold bed at Lowood school once more, nothing could diminish the moment in which she surrendered to herself, to him, to belief, to love. 

Yet she opened her eyes, and he was there still, looking at her as though recovered from blindness, eagerly consuming each inch of her face, a radiant and benevolent god, so exalted and yet, whose every expression and inflection she knew as intimately as her own; whose fate was dear to her as her own, to which she would willingly sacrifice herself. 

His hands began to roam hungrily about her waist, and her own fingers tentatively traveled to the warm, golden expanse of his neck. He began feverishly to unbutton her high collar, pressing burning kisses down her throat, now to her chest, until the world felt as though it spun around her as its weightless axis.

“Stop, we must stop a moment,” she panted, pushing at his chest. He regarded her from beneath lowered lashes, his features sultry and clouded with desire, as if she had awoken a sleepwalker.

“Why must we stop,” he intoned, dragging his thumb across her lips. Involuntarily, without knowing what possessed her, her mouth opened at his touch and she took his thumb between her teeth, at which he moaned and brought his lips to hers again. Some minutes passed before she managed to extricate herself once more. 

“No, sir,” she said firmly as he attempted to catch her up again.

“Sir, is it? Even after all this -”

“Jaime,” she chided, more softly, and he smiled at the sound of his name from her lips once again, “we must stop and think a moment. We must consider how to proceed. And what is more-”

“So very rational, my lady. Proceed with what? You love me, you have uttered those very words yourself - come to think, have you? Tell me you do, Brienne, let me hear it.”

She did so, quietly, smiling, disbelieving, and he grinned radiantly and brought her hand, large and long as his own, to his mouth to be kissed.  
“Then what else can there be? You will marry me as soon as it can be arranged. Where would you like to go on your wedding journey?”

“We cannot, not as soon as possible, at any rate - for - Jaime - who would believe us? Who would believe that a man of your...well, of your quality would marry his governess? Let alone one such as myself.”

“I wonder what you can mean by ‘one such as yourself’,” he mused, “Your height, your..mmm...your _dimensions_ , your eyes and lips and nose are of no business to anyone but me, my Brienne, my giantess, and to me they are more than satisfactory. What other objections have you?”

“We must give it time, Jaime. What of Myrcella? Mrs. Frey? We cannot emerge this very evening and announce to the whole house -” she began to laugh at the absurdity of the position she now found herself in, when only an hour before she had tucked the child into bed thinking she would have only a season more to do so before his wedding took place. Now the wedding was to be her own. 

“This is madness-” she said at last, recovering herself.

“So what it if it madness?” he replied, smiling, “it is yours and mine.”


	15. An Errand

When she rose in the morning, she could scarcely trust her memories of the previous night; the new words spoken, the new tones used, new plans forged. She dressed in a fugue, and joined her companions for breakfast, considering taking an additional turn through the gallery to increase the likelihood of crossing his path, but in the end she resisted, and squared her shoulders against the coming day.

She saw nothing of him until later in the morning, as she and Myrcella worked at letters in the courtyard. She raised her head from the slate to see his confident approach, his gallant stride, hands clasped behind his back, his golden mane shining in the sun.  
Once again, the small notes of fear truck their trebled chords; _he has come to his senses; in the cold light of morning, he has realized what a fool he has been to make promises to a homely governess, and now will tell me that he’s leaving for good…._

But now, as not before, new voices chimed in, warm and knowing, that recognized the game at play in the roguish grin he wore, and drowned out her despair. She pressed her lips into a line to suppress her smile, as Myrcella continued to work at her chalk.

“Good morning, ladies,” he intoned gently, with a slight bow.

“Good morning, sir.”

“I am terribly sorry my lady, but necessity dictates that I must deprive you of your tutor this day.”  
Myrcella narrowed her little green eyes and set down her slate as he continued. 

“You see, Miss Tarth is needed on urgent business. There is none other, none brave enough or strong enough to whom I can entrust this task.”

“I’m strong enough,” the child said reproachfully.

“I do not doubt that you are, but you have your lessons to learn, and, as Miss Tarth is already accomplished enough as can be expected in that arena -” He glanced at Brienne, who raised a skeptical eyebrow “-she is the only one who can be spared.”

“You might go yourself,” the pupil suggested brightly. 

Brienne smirked, while the Colonel, attempting to conceal his annoyance, answered slowly: “I am this day obliged to visit your uncle Tyrion at the lodge until nearly four o’clock, and will be unable to complete the errand myself.”

“But - ” 

Ignoring the girl, he turned to Brienne; “What say you, Miss Tarth, will you render this service for a friend?”

“Might I ask the nature of this important task?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, posting a letter-” Brienne and Myrcella shared a doubtful look “-A terribly important letter! Of the highest sensitivity, I assure you. Now, listen carefully,” he pulled his watch from his waistcoat. “You ought to be on your way by half past ten, taking the path over the hill. It will have you crossing the hill around eleven o’clock -”

“Why must she cross the hill at eleven o’clock?” 

“ _Because,_ ” he replied silkily, through gritted teeth, “she must not miss the post.”

“But the post doesn’t -” 

“What do you know of the post? Miss Tarth, those are my instructions, do you understand me?”

“I do, sir.”

“Good.”

“I wish to go with Miss Tarth.” Myrcella announced. 

“It is a pity then that you are not invited,” he replied peevishly. “Go and tell Mrs. Frey to amuse you.”

“But she won’t play at swords with me. Why must you take Miss Tarth?”

“Myrcella,” Brienne interceded warningly, “we do not whine, _and_ -” she added, directing a meaningful look at the Colonel, “we do not bait or quarrel.”

The child glowered and the gentleman looked smug.

“I thank you for your services Miss Tarth. Good day, ladies,” and with another small bow, turned away.

“Sir - am I not to take the letter?”

He halted and swung back around to face them, flicking his eyes in irritation to Myrcella who stifled a giggle.

“But of course.”

He extended a thin envelope to Brienne and met her eyes with a devilish look. She could feel the colour rising in her cheeks in spite of herself.

“Don’t be late.” 

 

An hour later, she descended the hillside nearest Millcote, looking closely about her and listening for sounds concealed by the gentle susurrus of the wind in the canopy. Suddenly, she paused, and thought she heard the faint clink of a bridle deeper in the woods. She listened hard, and examined the hoofprints in the dirt, as the dappled sunlight in the path shifted and winked.

She called out softly, hesitantly, “Jaime?” She waited, before calling a little louder, “Jaime?”

Silence, and then a scuffling through the trees, coming toward her, attended by branches snapping. He stumbled out into the road a little ahead of her, breathing heavily, his face all surprise.

“How, how did you-”

She shrugged. “You were hardly subtle.”

He laughed and dusted his hands as she approached to meet him. 

“I was the very spirit of mystery. And you, my lady, are late.”

“Yes, well, owing your _mystery_ , I was obliged to apprehend a small fugitive who followed my course, and return her to her keep.” 

He tossed his head annoyedly. “Impossibly like Tyrion that one. A crafty little creature. Unnaturally possessive. Ought to mind her own business.”

“I was beginning to think I ought to sit you both on the stair to teach you to play civilly.”

“I didn’t want to share you, Brienne. Is that so objectionable?” He stepped toward her, slowly closing the space between them. “Besides, this day is significant, and should not be ignored.”

“Why so?” she managed to say, though all her breath was caught when he smoothed a lock of hair behind her ear. There was no laughter in his look now.

“It is the first day that I have awoken knowing that you love me. I did not want to waste it.”  
His mouth closed on her lips.

When he withdrew he examined her closely. “You do still, do you not? Your heart cannot have changed overnight.”

She smiled. “I never thought - never thought to look for such happiness.”

“You will have more happiness than you can stand, if I am the man you want. Come, this way.”

 

He took her hand and lead her through the woods for some minutes, down what little remained of the hill, until they came upon a small clearing on the bank of a narrow creek, a bower thickly laid with moss, illuminated by rich bands of sunlight, all in green and gold. 

Upon the grass was spread a coverlet of linen, where rested a basket containing fruit and cakes and bread, a bottle of wine and two glasses. 

Her guide had already thrown himself down upon this square and was kicking off his boots when he noticed that Brienne still stood at the edge of the clearing, blue eyes wide at the sight. 

She opened her mouth to speak, to protest; all this was too much; an excess of care and thought, too much beauty to possibly have been devised for her pleasure; but she thought better of it and assumed a place on the ground beside him. 

“This is beautiful,” was all she said, eyes shining as she gazed wonderingly upon every rock and branch and ripple.

“I am pleased you find it so. And, thanks to my careful machinations, we have the day to ourselves. It was good of me to keep it a secret from the girl, was it not? I wanted to take you in my arms at once, but I refrained, as a gentleman ought.” He had stretched out alongside her and was propped up on one elbow, looking up at her mischievously. 

“I admired your restraint. And will continue to admire it, I hope.”

“And how long must that be?” 

“In truth I don’t know. It’s only that - I do not wish to be taken unawares - Jaime, please,” she gave him a stern look to quiet the objection on his lips, and continued, “I am unused to such niceties as...companionship, or...love. I had never thought to have them, and so I know nothing of how to _conduct_ myself. If we were to tell all the world at once, I would have skeptical eyes follow my progress, my actions, my mistakes, mock and deride my missteps, my appearance. Before I invite such attentions, I wish to be accustomed to the _manner_ of it, accustomed to _you_.”

“But you are accustomed to me.”

“Yet not like this - I am not used to - to being able to reach for you - when I want to.” She reached out a hand to smooth along his cheek, hesitant at first, but her tender gesture gaining confidence, knowing it was wanted. 

“My lady, as long as you should want me, I will wait for you,” he said softly, a huskiness in his throat. 

 

They passed the morning in conversation, eating from the basket which Mrs. Frey had prepared, ostensibly, for Tyrion’s enjoyment. 

“Tell me of your home,” he said, and so she told what she could remember. She recalled the immutable blue of the sea, spending days on the rocks as a girl, the view from a high parapet, a pair of strong hands lifting her high in the air, the harsh words from her septa. She told him too of the letter from her uncle, and her own sent in return, to which she had as yet received no response. 

The sun grew high, and their leafy enclosure grew warmer. They lay on their backs carelessly, staring up into the trees, slowly consuming strawberries.

“What say we go for a swim?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. If I return in a wet shift, Mrs. Frey will at the very least think I’ve gone mad.”

“I believe there is an obvious solution to your dilemma.” 

She laughed. “And again, I beg you not to be quite so absurd. What if someone saw us?”

“Has anyone come upon us yet today?”

“The risk is too great.”

“The gains are to compelling to be ignored. You forget my lady, I already know the figure that you so modestly conceal under superfluous layers.”

He turned to her and began to trace with a lazy brush of his hand the length of her, murmuring, “I believe I knew it then, that night. In the moonlight - you looked like a silver goddess, Athena, the Warrior, the Maiden, tall and shining, as if you were _made_ of moonlight…and all the smoke rising around you, your eyes…”

She rose suddenly. “Jaime…”

He grunted in response, lost in contemplation of her bodice, the high collar long since undone and calling to be unbuttoned further.

“Surely now you can tell me…”

“Tell you what?” He replied distractedly, his hand snaking about her waist, drawing her in.

“The truth.”

“What can you mean?”

“Who is that person? Who tried to-”

His expression darkened, and his hand fell from its soft, intent ministrations. “What does it matter?”

“It matters because it is the truth, Jaime. Because both you and Tyrion have nearly been felled by her hand, and if you love me and trust me as you say you do -”

“I do.”

“Then you will entrust me with this knowledge, whatever it can be. Who is she - what is she? Why do you conceal her?”

He turned aside, his voice flat and dismissive.

“I will explain it all to you one day. But that day is not today.”

“Nor will it be tomorrow, or the next.” She got to her feet, towering over him, muttering oaths. “What manner of fool do you take me for, Jaime Lannister? You think I am simple enough that I can live with such an uncertainty over my head? I will not.” 

She bent to put her boots back on, hooking the laces for some moments in silence, cursing the useless ornamentation of ladies shoes.

She stole a look over her shoulder at him. He had not moved nor spoken a word, yet as he watched her prepare to go, his handsome face was frozen in a kind of horrified despair, his mouth open in shock, powerless to prevent her, as if she had gravely wounded him.

She turned back to him on her knees. Pleadingly, she said:  
“I cannot abide the idea that you would have secrets from me. I want to know - everything. Everything that concerns you, I ought to bear too.”

When he saw that she did not take her leave, he sighed heavily and dropped his head to his chest, and moved to kneel before her. He took her hand from her lap and clasped it to his breast.

“I swear to you, one day I will make it known. Just as you require time to acclimate to this - to our...new arrangement, I and my secret must also adapt to you. I need time, Brienne. With each day, I will find the strength to reveal all to you. And so I ask again: do you trust me?”

“Yes.”

He pressed her palm to his lips, fervently. “Good.”

“I will not like it,” she warned sternly, and he laughed.

“My lady, I’ll warrant I can occupy your time with many other things that you will like. Come, have some wine.”

Brienne once more had occasion, having witnessed it on more than one fireside evening, to be amazed that a Jaime with wine on his tongue was even more prone to volubility than a sober or politely social Jaime. He lay his head in her lap, held his glass balanced on his chest, and recounted to her his various travels, their tribulations, adventures, and tediums; fools, brigands, and Dornish noblemen he had known. 

Once she smoothed a golden strand back from his forehead, and when he did not pause his meandering disquisition, she began idly to run her fingers through his hair, letting the silver at his temples catch the light. The wine was light and crisp, and tasted of cold stone and apples, and made her limbs felt loose and somehow delicious. She let his talk, his arch, scathing, amused tones surround her, envious of the breadth of the life he had lived. 

“...and that, dear lady, is why one never ought to commandeer a Meereenese fishing boat.”

“Would you take me to Meereen?” she asked suddenly.

“I would take you anywhere. I will take you everywhere. Meereen is where you’d like to go first, is it?”

“I think so. Somewhere entirely different, entirely new.”

“It’s a long sea voyage.”

“I was born to the sea,” she said proudly.

“Is that so, my lady of Tarth? A proud mariner through and through.”

A carnivorous gleam came into his eye and he set his glass aside, hooked a finger in the cleft of her bodice, and pulled her down to meet his kiss. His fingers threaded through her hair and held her firmly, and as he rose from her lap, he pushed her back until she lay beneath him, supine and alive to his touch. She felt mellifluous and malleable, full of trickling honey, her modesty abandoned, replaced with a desire to be pulled apart, unbound, and - she could not think what- only that she wanted him to inflict it. 

Divinely, he obliged, releasing her clasp by clasp, kiss by kiss, until he wrestled her from her bodice and she was altogether free, her arms bare, her thin chemise slipping from her shoulders, and he drew a slow finger down between her small breasts, watching her, smiling wickedly as she shivered and arched. Under his hands, his ravenous gaze, she felt sublime and full, gorgeous in her need, pink and gentle white flesh under his tongue. He thrust a hand beneath her skirts and traveled up the length of her thigh to grip at her buttocks, pulling her roughly to him until she gasped in surprise. 

“Tell me to stop,” he said darkly, “tell me.”

She shook her head, amazed at herself, amazed at him. 

“Tell me,” he insisted, even as his fingers curled beneath her to her inner thigh, nearer and nearer to her cunt, slick and aching, “and I’ll stop.”

“No,” she whispered, lifting her head to kiss him, but he kept his lips just beyond her reach, and smiled.

He watched her intently as his fingers slowly dipped between her wet folds, and slid up, up, almost to the bead of her, then down, and pushed deeper. Her eyelids flickered.

“Do you touch yourself Brienne?” He murmured, as he began to stroke her to his own rhythm, gliding over the swollen bud, the liquid heart.

“Yes.”

“Who do you think of, in your bed, when you touch this beautiful cunt?”

“You.”

“Give me my name.”

“ _Jaime_.”

“That’s right.”

“ _Jaime_ ,” she moaned, losing sense of the words as his touch came faster. 

Suddenly he stopped, and she cried out and lifted her hips impulsively, trying to grind into his fingers again. 

He thrust her knees apart and lowered himself until he lay before her, her skirts hiked wantonly above her waist. Down the pale expanse of her inner thigh he trailed his lips faintly, relishing her every ragged breath, and placed a single fingertip at the wet mouth of her cunt. 

He laid a hand flat on her belly and with his thumb pulled back the pale curls of her thatch to reveal the glistening bud, and then, exquisitely, tenderly, his tongue submerged itself in her seam, his lips closed around her, and she dissolved utterly, dripping and scintillating in lush waves of wet heat, better than her dreams. Two fingertips now tucked into her soft open cunt, pushing deeper and deeper and curling at her center, he began to thrust. Her low, desperate cries seemed to drive him faster and faster, thrusting and devouring, ravaging and consuming, his tongue thick and sopping and dark upon her, as though she were sand and there were waves breaking in her, harder and harder, dragging her back, mounting and quickening, until a furious white heat, bright and streaming, burst like a miracle and she gave a long, final, exultant cry. Her body quaked and trembled, and when he moved back, wiping his lips, she pressed her legs together and wrapped herself in her arms, shuddering in her joy. 

He threw himself down beside her, like a lion fresh from the kill, grinning like a demon. When she opened her eyes, she saw him watching her, a contented smile on his regal features. She could think of nothing at all to say, and she began to laugh, helplessly. He joined in her laughter, in his deep, staccato voice. 

He reached an arm out and motioned for her to rest her head on his chest, which she did, after a moment’s hesitation. They breathed together for a few minutes. 

“You… are -” he said wonderingly, his nose buried in her hair, “a heathen. An absolute heathen. Virtuous as a septa, but when I throw you down you’re but a greedy tavern wench.”

“I am no such thing.”

“I beg to differ, wench. I saw your dismay when I -”

“Don’t call me that.”

“What, wench? Oh but it suits you. Now that I know your propriety is only - he plucked at her flimsy linen chemise - “shift deep.”

Suddenly she raised her head to look at him. “Oh gods, what about you?” 

“What do you mean, what about me?”

“Well don’t you - I mean to say, from what I’ve heard - a man’s desire is…” She blushed furiously, unable to continue repeating the smutty gossip from Pia, the mechanics of which she understood but little.

“Ah, now you remember me?” he laughed, “So rapacious that she cannot spare a thought for her lover until she has had her fill. Fear not, wench; there will be plenty of time for that. May I be so bold as to inquire - was this the first time for you...with a man?”

Her chin rested on his breast, and she favored him with a withering stare from narrowed eyes.

“There is no harm in asking, I hope. It is a rare thing, one’s first. There will be many firsts, my lady. We need not hurry. Indeed it is best to savour each new conquest.”

He looked so handsome, his eyes so green and kind, that she kissed him. She felt his lips curve beneath hers once more into a smile. 

“Haven’t you had enough yet, wench?”

“My _name_ is Brienne.”

 

Some hours later, she plucked his watch from his long since discarded coat and saw that it was high time that they should return. He grumbled, but helped her to stow all their goods into the basket, and to load the horse, who had been tied up across the creek. 

Together they made their way up the hill through the darkening wood, as clouds gathered and cast a blue pall over the thicket. She could smell rain on the air. When they neared the treeline that hemmed the Casterly grounds, she stopped him.

“I ought to return first,” she said, “And you must ride up after.”

“I don’t give a damn. Can we not say that we met on the road?”

“I would rather not have the idea of our meeting at all in anyone’s head. Particularly not if we aim to repeat it.”

He moved to kiss her, but she dodged beyond his reach, and made her way through the trees.

“Tonight, then,” he called after her. She smiled and looked briefly at him over her shoulder. 

She could not stop smiling as she made her way across the lawn, knowing he stood in the trees with his mount, like an ancient hero, proud and beautiful, watching her go. She felt scattered drops of rain on her cheeks, and the sky grew blacker overhead, but it did not dim her expression.

She had reached the footbridge when the wind picked up, the rain came harder, and she heard a crack of thunder tear and echo overhead. The pendulous clouds that crowded in the sky were illuminated sharply by violent slashes of light, closer and closer.

By the time she reached the courtyard, the rain was like a torrent and the thunder did not cease to roll; a heavy, god-like drum. She flung open the wooden side door and raced up the stair to the gallery window in time to see a pale rider emerge from the trees, charging hard for the stables. 

In spite of herself, her triumphant mood, all the unlooked for pleasures she had savoured seemed now somehow diminished; a glorious day, she thought, marred only by the storm. Who could say when she might have him to herself again? Surely such a perfect gift could not continue without souring? She ought to have kissed him once more before leaving... She chastised herself for her melancholy turn, and made her way to her room, as the wind rattled the windowpanes and drove the rain.


	16. The Open Window

When she had finished, and the final words had been permitted to fall with their due weight, she allowed a comfortable silence in which the snapping of the fire was all that could be heard. Gently, she closed the volume, and looked up at her audience. Myrcella sat on the floor, her small hands folded earnestly, her eyes wide with admiration. She had begged for a reading of Westerosi legends to while away the rainy evening, and had spent the past hour entirely transfixed, neither fidgeting nor stirring. 

Indeed, compelled perhaps by the portentous, pendulous clouds which surrounded the keep, inspired by the dark grey sky, which lent an air of the Westeros of old, Brienne had put more feeling into her reading than usual, imbuing the speeches with nobility and drama.

Mrs. Frey’s needlework was abandoned in her lap, and she sighed wistfully, “Well done, my dear.” 

Then, leaning in the doorway behind the old woman, Brienne caught sight of his tall figure, keeping watch. How long had he stood there? Long enough, evidently to hear her, to be caught up in the story. His eyes shone, his face writ with a radiant softness.  
“Bravo, Miss Tarth,” he said quietly. 

It had been a full day since she had seen him. On the evening of their return from the woods, a messenger had arrived, soaked and shivering, requesting the Colonel’s presence at his brother’s bedside. 

“Strange that Mr. Tyrion should want him back again, when he’s only just returned. Why, it’s more than an hour’s ride!” Mrs. Frey had exclaimed tetchily. 

Brienne had ducked her head and pretended a sudden fascination with the teapot, hoping not to betray by her cheeks either the lie or her disappointment, as the old lady sighed heavily, “I hope it does not signal that he has taken a turn for the worse.”

And so the Colonel had departed at once in his coach. The storm blazed through the night, and had not abated all day. She had not caught another glimpse of him until this moment.

When he spoke, Mrs. Frey twisted in her chair to see her unlooked-for master, and bustled to her feet. “Colonel Lannister, you’ve returned! How did you come so? You might have caught cold, sir! Why make such haste?”

“T’was nothing, Madam. I had begun a bit of business here at Casterly and thought I ought to return to see how it was getting on. Besides, Mr. Tyrion needed his rest.”

“Ah, of course, sir. And how is he?”

“Fine, fine, Madam, all is on the mend. Mrs. Frey, I wonder if you would take Myrcella up, I wish a word with Miss Tarth.”

The old woman looked at him with an air of faint bewilderment, as she took in the Colonel’s dreamy expression, the strange haze in his eyes, which did not leave Brienne.

“Of course, sir.” She replied slowly, turning to look at Brienne, who, seeking to escape similar scrutiny, turned abruptly to gather the book from the chair. But too late; she could sense a gentle machinery whirring behind the housekeeper’s eyes, as though a treadle wheel were spinning new intuition from the scene. 

Myrcella insisted on bearing the volume of Westerosi legends up to her room, and, struggling under its weight, made her tottering way out.  
“I’ll be but a moment,” Brienne said to Mrs. Frey, but the other woman did not meet her eyes. Instead she dipped a small curtsey and was gone. 

The Colonel strode to the fireplace to lean upon the mantle. Distracted though she was by the prospect of Mrs. Frey’s suspicions, Brienne could not but marvel at the sight of him. 

“I hope you are well, Miss Tarth.”

“I am, sir. And you?”

“Better now.” He pushed himself languidly from the hearth and approached her.

“How fares Mr. Lannister?” 

“Still very weak, I’m afraid,” he replied, frowning, taking hold of her hand and examining intently its sturdy palm, “but the Maesters say he shall recover entirely in time.” 

“I am very glad to hear it.”

“Indeed,” he nodded, pulling her nearer, “I hope that I can expect your company tonight.”

“Jaime, we must have more care -”

They heard brisk footsteps approaching on the flagstone, and Brienne moved automatically toward the door, yet he retained his grasp on her wrist.

“Come to me later.”

She hesitated. “Perhaps tomorrow the rain will stop...”

“Please, Brienne. Be near me.”

“Miss Tarth,” called Mrs. Frey hesitantly from the hallway, “Myrcella has misplaced her yellow nightdress, and she will have no other-”  
Brienne bobbed a hasty half-curtsy, said “Goodnight sir,” as evenly as she could muster, and left him. 

 

Returning to her room after tucking the child into bed, Brienne cursed herself for her folly in allowing evidence of the truth to be seen. What might Mrs. Frey imagine she had witnessed? If only she had held her nerve! If only she were capable of meeting his presence with an unruffled exterior, rather than the shamefacedness of naughty schoolgirl. Now she could be sure of being watched far more closely. 

She lay sleepless for hours, turning to this side and that. With every turn of her cheek upon the pillow, she resolved to go, or not to go; imagining alternately the humiliation of being caught, and the carnal indulgence she might enjoy, his warm hands on her face. She had not made up her mind until the clock in the hall struck midnight, when, against her soberer judgements, she threw back the coverlet. 

Moments later, she stood at his door, tapping lightly, looking furtively over her shoulder, down the passage. The door opened a crack, emanating a dim, golden glow, and he appeared, his cheek against the door. His eyes glittered wickedly.  
“Who goes there?”

She very nearly shivered; his beauty was unnatural, his lasciviousness radiating from him like heat from coals. Yet he stood surveying her, from bare feet to exposed shoulders, and did not move aside to let her in.

“What giant sprite is this at my chamber door?”

“Jaime,” she hissed.

“Do you mean some wickedness against me?”

“Someone will hear you.”

“Wandering down the hall in scarcely any clothes-”

“If you cannot be serious, I shall leave.” And she abruptly turned to go. A strong hand shot out and seized her arm, and pulled her in the door in a flash.

She stood once more in his room, at the foot of his bed, that from which she had once pulled his unconscious form; his bed, where she had imagined herself more often than she cared to admit. He closed the door gently with his back against it, eyeing her like a lion sizing up its cornered prey.

“I only came to talk,” she said archly.

“I’m sure you did.”

“And I cannot stay long-”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“And I have brought your dressing gown” She thrust the handful of bundled silk at him stiffly.

He smiled lazily, rising from the door and moving toward her.

“Must we begin again each time?” He said, “I have touched you, held you…” he took the garment slowly from her outstretched hand, “tasted you...and yet each time we meet, I find that you have drawn the veil between us again. I wonder…when it will be that you will leave it parted for me.”

He moved very close to her, looking at her chest as though he could see through the linen of her shift, and her whole frame tensed in anticipation of his touch - but he sauntered past her, and collapsed into a chair, tossing the silk aside. She turned to face him, puzzled, feeling oddly bereft, as though she had moved into a shady place away from the sun’s light.

“What do you want, Brienne?”

The rain was driving against the window panes, and a fire crackled in the grate. She was speechless.

“I know what I want most,” he said, sitting forward, “I wonder if it can be the same thing. Come here.”

It could only be a spell. Her body moved independently of her, slowly, her mind lifted high above, still and calm, and the only thing which raced was her heart. She came to stand before him, at arm’s length, where he could reach out and touch her -  
“Closer,” he murmured.

She took a step forward.

_“Closer.”_

Another step and she stood between his knees.

He leaned forward, and with one hand, reached down and began to brush a delicate trail up her ankle bones, her calves, and beneath her hem, drawing up her long, pale legs, reaching the soft curve of her backside. His fingers curled beneath, around to her inner thigh, near the lips of her cunt which had long since begun to ache and bloom.

“Perhaps I am not after all the man you imagined. For I want nothing more than to ask you to give yourself to me..”

Her eyelids fluttered and her head felt heavy, yearning to be relieved of the weight of thought. 

“I ought to be a gentleman...to wait until you offer yourself, until we are wed.”

One finger traced faintly between, finding her slick and yielding, and she could not prevent a small moan escaping her lips.  
He growled and buried his face against her, clenching her skirt in his fist.“I cannot be good where you are concerned. I can only beg you-” his hands roved over her hips, “like the common scoundrel I am, please…” 

“ _Yes_ , Jaime, yes,” she breathed.

He stood abruptly, not relinquishing his hold. The question was in his eyes as he looked sternly into hers, as was the assurance that he would destroy himself before taking something she did not readily give. 

“Are you certain?”

“I wish it, Jaime.” 

“You would not wait-?”

“I would not wait another day.”

_“Brienne.”_ He kissed her lips gently, lingeringly. She felt as though she were a small pool of water - the slightest movement caused ripples to spill across her, currents to move within her. 

He slid her shift languorously up over her thick waist, and she raised her arms to let it sail away over her head. He ducked to crush his mouth against her breast, his arms cradling her back, her waist, bringing her to his lips as though she were a chalice from which he could drink. 

She pulled at his shirt, tugging it roughly up from his breeches. He broke from her and cast it off, and she stood for a moment astonished at the body before her. Only statues she had seen in books, only illustrations of ancient heroes looked as he did, carved with rolling muscle, taut and powerful. And such printed gods had not the warmth, the golden radiance of Jaime Lannister. He was the Warrior made flesh. 

She brushed her fingers down his chest until she met the waist of his breeches, as he stepped into her touch. Boldly, thoughtlessly, watching his eyes widen, she dropped her hand until it met the stiff outline of his cock. He drew a swift breath, grinned, and caught his lower lip in his teeth. This was a strange power, she thought. She pressed her palm against him and he groaned in pleasure. Even the lightest touch, it seemed, made him frenzied with desire, supplicant, crowding himself against her like an animal. She was in awe of it.

He kissed her again, deeply, and, holding her against him, walked slowly back until her legs struck the bed. He drew her down to sit at its edge, and knelt before her, throwing one long, white thigh over his shoulder. With solemn delectation he applied himself to her grateful cunt, pulsing his eager tongue against her, as she beaded and bubbled like sugar in heat, a frothing, pale fire, stroked and ravished until it threatened to spill over.

She could only express her need in shallow breaths, in gasps; she put her fingers in her mouth to stop herself from crying out in her delirium. Yet when her whole center was a sweet, molten scoria, on the verge of rapture, he stopped. To her amazement, she saw that he had somehow managed to undo his breeches withal, and now, standing, he drew them off entirely. 

It was not the first cock Brienne had ever seen, nor even, in her varied life, the first hard cock, but certainly it was the only one she had seen so near. Before he could move, she reached forward to stroke it, gently, with only her fingertips. She was surprised at its softness, its smooth warmth, and when she grasped it but lightly, its exhilarating firmness, how she could feel his blood coursing and his arousal manifest. 

When she looked up into his eyes, she saw that he was in part astonished at her gesture, but that his shock was submerged in an animalian hunger, his expression dark with lust, succumbing to her touch. His lips, glistening still, hung apart, and she felt now what it was to be the master of the spell which could keep a person in such willing thrall. Its perfect head seemed to invite her, and, not knowing what possessed her, she pressed a soft kiss to the tip, at which he shivered and groaned. 

She had glimpsed kitchen girls kneeling before their beaus behind the scullery, had spied with timid curiosity the general nature of such performances. Never had she imagined the urge that could compel a woman to take a man in her mouth, until that very moment. Her desire left no room for diffidence, as she brought him to her open lips and let her tongue flow over him. Further and further she pulled him, drawing back, then plunging slowly forward, her mouth a perfect, fluent wave in which he was losing himself, growling low. What was it about his hardness which moved her so? Her cunt felt lush, ready, yearning, as she brought him deeper and deeper, to her throat, wanting only more. 

With a strangled cry, he gasped, “Stop-” and she released him in alarm. 

“Jaime, I- was it wrong?”

“No! No, come.” He pulled her to her feet and pressed her against him, crushing heavy kisses to her neck, her jaw. She could feel him hard against her, and he rocked himself into her thigh. Hoarsely he spoke below her ear, “You are too good, my lady. Don’t finish me just yet.” 

He kissed her with forceful indiscriminateness, her lips wet, her salty taste upon his lips, his tongue against hers. She wanted only friction, though she did not know where or how -she thought she might go mad. Mercifully, he did not leave her side, did not cease to touch her, even as he lowered them both to the center of the bed, his heat and hardness did not desert her; palming her breasts, teasing her sticky cunt, he overwhelmed her senses and she wished she could live beneath him. 

With one hand by her cheek, keeping her eyes in his eyes, he guided himself between her legs, parting her with his tender fingers, and pushed himself slowly into her. He moved so slowly, so deliciously slowly, she longed to scream and throw herself against him, only to have more, to have what he had not yet given her. Her eyes grew wide and her chest swelled, taking in air as she took him, ecstatically. The pressure, the weight, the exquisite fullness, growing, ever deeper, until all at once, he was within, she had swallowed him whole, engulfed him and held him there, expanded to fit him; a dim pain limned the pressure, but it paled like starlight before the moon.

Jaime. Jaime moved in her, pulling back, only to fill her again. She had room only for Jaime, the only one who could move her so, Jaime, moving faster, his forehead pressed to hers, joined to her in reverie. He brought his hand down and began to stroke her as he plunged, wetly, rhythmically, his green eyes afire, until he brought her sensational careening climax to break upon upon them both in a sheen so high and rich, she wanted to sing. In an instant he followed, seized in his own satisfaction with an exultant cry. He collapsed beside her.

 

Everything was still. Nothing was still. There was silence. She stared into the canopy above them and though everything in her sight was unmoving, her heart raced and the edges of her vision flickered, dazedly receiving flashes of the frenzy from only moments before. It was as though she had been surrounded by a raucous crowd and slipped suddenly into a quiet refuge, and the voices still hung in the air about her. For a long while they lay motionless. 

Then she felt him turn his head to look at her. His eyes were soft and shining in the dim glow. It was like some glorious cosmic error, his face beside hers; his golden skin against the white linen, every small line radiating from the corners of his eyes, faint creases across his brow, even when peaceful. What a man was here. 

He rose on one elbow, and leaned forward to kiss her delicately. 

“Do not move,” he said, and rose from the bed. 

She suddenly recalled her nakedness, and sat up to cross her arms over her chest. He was away at a wardrobe, fussing. When he returned, he had some article hidden behind his back.

“Often have I looked at this and been reminded of you. While you were away…” 

Sitting on the edge of the bed behind her, with both hands he lifted something over her head. Heavy and cold, it came to settle against her chest.

“My mother never wore it. My father preferred to see her in the colours of our own house.”

She looked down to see a magnificent necklace of delicately wrought silver, suspended drops of pearls, and, nestled among diamonds, nine sapphires of astonishing size. 

“A handful of rocks doesn’t do anyone any good lying idle in a case. But here they are dramatically improved -” he closed the clasp and leaned forward to regard her - “by the favour of your eyes. Which makes it rightfully yours.” 

Her mouth hung open as she looked down at the dazzling array on her broad, pale breast. Never in her life had she touched anything so fine.  
“Jaime, but - I look -”

“See for yourself how you look.” He bounded from the bed and drew her up, leading her to stand before the tall glass. He stood at her shoulder, surveying her pale body, in stark relief against his golden form. She blushed heavily.

“Ridiculous. It’s beautiful, but jewels for a governess? For me? I think not.”

“Think again, my lady; for I will cover you in jewels. And satins…” His arms came to encircle her waist, his lips just below her ear, “And lace, and silk gowns-”

“-These are all very fine things for other ladies, sir, but not for me. I am plain and should like to remain my plain self, and sensible. It is not to my taste to pretend myself among the Margaery Tyrells of the world. If I did, you would not know me.”

She turned to face him, and eye to eye they stood. He sighed wistfully, and looked her over once again, from white flank to defiantly raised chin. “Perhaps you’re right. A solemn goddess, with no need for frippery or ornament. A classical, true maid. Though a maid no longer...” 

He laughed as she plucked helplessly at the clasp about her neck, and came to her aid, dropping the priceless bauble to the floor as he took her in his arms.

She protested the late hour in vain, and soon but halfheartedly; he was too much to leave. She could not bear the thought that the sun should rise, that it would signal the obligation to return to the world beyond their bed. Under his firm caress, his worshipful eye, she decided she did not care whether the servants saw her in the morning; all that mattered was that she would be his. In the end they slept, two heads resting on the same pillow, hand in hand.

 

She opened her eyes; the clock on the mantle told her that only an hour had passed. The fire was now only embers in the hearth, and there was a keen, cold wind blowing through the room. Seeking for its source, she saw that the window was ajar; the gale, still surging fiercely, had blown it open, where it now shuddered and creaked. 

Carefully as she was able, she lifted the coverlet slowly and slid from the bed so as not to disturb her companion. The draught had chilled the room, and she wrapped her arms about herself, shivering, grateful for the rich carpet beneath her feet. Crossing to the window, she snatched up Jaime’s robe from where he had discarded it, and slipped her arms into its capacious sleeves. 

The catch on the window had indeed broken loose. She turned the handle and pulled it gently shut, producing a slight squeal. She turned to make her way to the bed, and it was then that she saw the woman standing in the study. 

The woman’s back was turned; she moved her head and twisted her hands, apparently speaking animatedly to someone who was not there, in a spare, rustling hiss.  
At once Brienne knew this figure to be the spectre she had chased, the one with whom she had wrestled on either side of the secret door. This was no Jeyne Poole. She saw with a sickening start the mane of long blonde hair, gleaming in the moonlight, cascading down the woman’s slender back. 

And yet, though stricken, she found herself drawing nearer the figure, on silent feet. Perhaps if only she could speak to her, only reason with this creature a moment, she might learn the mystery Jaime dared not speak of. If she only knew, then might she comfort him...

The woman suddenly swung about to face her. Brienne tensed in alarm, but the stranger did not advance. Concealed though this intruder was in the moonlit shadows, from across the narrow room, Brienne could see that her pained face was extraordinarily beautiful, with proud high cheeks, and handsome eyes...almost as if - 

“Jaime my love, where are they? Where is Joffrey, and Tommen?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still here :)


End file.
